


Defanged and Feral

by Indecision



Series: Trust: A Working Theory [2]
Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Bathing/Washing, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Drinking Games, Drunkenness, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Mild Blood, No Civilian Kills | Not Even Once, Quiet Sex, Rough Sex, Secret Relationship, Semi-Public Sex, Sparring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28135581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indecision/pseuds/Indecision
Summary: A view into the nightly life of Dr. Jonathan E. Reid since his signing on as the Guard of Priwen's lead physician.OrMcCullum and Reid have to learn to dance around the Guard if they want to keep their relationship under wraps and their heads on their bodies.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum & Jonathan Reid, Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Series: Trust: A Working Theory [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061213
Comments: 40
Kudos: 131





	1. A Fox in a Hen House

“OW- fuck, watch it! Cunt leech!” The soldier spat and shoved Dr. Reid hard in the chest. Another man would have gone sprawling across the hardwood, taking tools and bottles down with him in the cramped space of the Priwen infirmary, but Dr. Reid only allowed himself to be pushed back a few steps, giving the man some space. He refused to flinch at the insult and waited with the endless reserve of patience bestowed only to seasoned medical professionals while the blond haired 20 something seethed and pressed his left arm close to his side defensively.

“Oy, that’s Dr. Leech, boy,” a gruff voice carried from the doorway. McCullum rapped the back of his knuckles on the frame in delayed announcement and leaned a shoulder into the trim with folded arms. The boy grunted with a sour face but was silenced with a look that suggested he ought to keep his teeth together if he wanted to keep them in his mouth. 

“McGuire is bleeding through his gauze again,” McCullum addressed Reid, “when you have a moment.” He laid eyes on the young soldier again and pinned him with a withering glare. “Let him do his job, ya daft git. I’m not letting him run loose in here for nothing.” Reid had his hands clasped behind his back and a blank, professional facade that nearly crumbled when his lip quirked against his will, but when McCullum shrugged away from the door and slipped out of sight he returned to the young man with a careful smile. 

“Well then, as I’m needed elsewhere, I can either do this quickly or not at all. So, either we set the arm now and be done with it, or you can come back in a month when the pain becomes too great and I can break it again to set it properly.” The young man paled visibly and Reid could sense the sharp falter in his heartbeats as he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. “A simple yes will suffice,” Reid met him halfway. The lad closed his mouth but nodded grimly, and Reid set to work. 

By the time Reid had made his rounds through the barracks and retired to his quarters it was too close to sunrise to risk the mad dash home, but the more time he spent at the Priwen base the more he came to appreciate his stays there. His private room was in a secluded corner of the downstairs level so that the threat of sunlight never nagged at him in the windowless space, and the bed was solid and comfortable with a desk and work station to match. Of course, there was always the argument that it wasn’t the space that he stayed for so much as the company. 

It was nearly dawn when McCullum knocked curtly before letting himself in unannounced, but Jonathan never needed a declaration to know when someone was intent on approaching, and he smiled warmly at the commander’s intrusion. 

“Did ya set that lad straight from earlier?” McCullum asked. 

“I set his bone straight at the very least.” 

McCullum huffed a laugh and Reid returned it with a grin, one laced with the barest hint of fang in an uncommon display of security. The hunter didn’t look so unnerved by them these days as he once had, and Jonathan found himself smiling more and more, albeit around him and only him. It had been a strange feeling for each to lower their hackles around the other, solitary and mistrustful creatures as they both were, but it was a comfortable truce for which they’d both been so unknowingly desperate it felt almost natural now to wallow in each other’s company like cats in the sun.

“It’s a given some of them’ll take some wearing down. I’m surprised how many of ‘em took to you so quickly, almost makes me suspicious,” McCullum mused as he took a seat in Jonathan’s desk chair. 

Jonathan lay back on the bed and folded his hands behind his head to gaze at the ceiling and stare at nothing in particular. “I suppose you should be proud of the stubborn ones, even if they are making things difficult.”  
“Ay, that I am. It’s what I would’ve wanted.”

“You trained them well then, either way. The ones that would still rather stake me than speak to me are true to your ideals, and the ones that tolerate me are loyal to your orders as you give them. Truly a well-oiled vampire-exterminating militia, regardless.”

“Hm,” McCullum chuckled again, “I’d hate to test that loyalty, if they knew the extent of it all.” Reid turned his head at the sudden gravity in the other’s tone but had no words for him. They were in agreement that it was for the better that Priwen remain in the dark in regard to their leader’s personal affairs, but the secret weighed heavy on McCullum especially. “Truth be told, I haven’t a clue what they’d do. I’ve half a hope they’d put a bullet between my eyes on the spot, but the other half of me holds on to the hope they’d…” McCullum rubbed a hand over the side of his face and sighed heavily, “I dunno, just let it go I guess.” Jonathan’s eyes held no pity, but he was an empathetic soul and it showed in gestures like this as he sat up to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and gently patted the empty space beside him. McCullum groused and disregarded his urging, instead kicking his feet up onto Reid’s desk and ignoring the pointed look. 

“Geoffrey, sit with me,” he ordered simply. It wasn’t demanding, but it was still an instruction rather than a request and McCullum didn’t take kindly to it, glaring at him venomously. When Reid didn’t relent or turn his gaze away, he withered a bit, but still gave a valiantly defiant huff of exasperation before he dropped his heels from the desk and moved to sit heavily beside the doctor who rested a hand firmly on his thigh.

“Your men respect you a great deal. There is a chance, however small, that exceptions may be made. And, if not, you can rest easy knowing the future of Priwen is in dedicated, bigoted hands.” McCullum snickered but didn’t argue and the doctor’s assessment rang true; there was solace to be found in the notion that no matter how this mess would unravel itself, Priwen would prevail as always. He had faith in that much. 

“There’s no good way to tell them. No proper way to say it. I just hate to think I’m taking the coward’s way out by trying to cover my tracks instead of facing the consequences of my own stupid actions.”

“You could argue that half of your actions were actually mine. I play no small part in this dilemma.”

Geoffrey scoffed. “Obviously.”

“It is both dejecting and rather fortunate that ‘the coward’s way out’ is also the most pragmatic. I believe you to be doing the sensible thing by keeping sensitive information from insensible people.” 

McCullum reared on him with a disgruntled scowl. “Oy, my men aren’t insensible. On the contrary, they’re the level headed ones here, good soldiers with stronger moral compasses than mine evidently-” he leaned closer to sneer in Reid’s questioning face “-The fact that they won’t be swayed by a pretty leech in pretty clothes attests to that.”

“Are you easily swayed by just any pretty leech in pretty clothes?” Reid canted his head mockingly, undeterred. 

“Not easily,” Geoffrey glared back.

“No. Certainly not.” 

A moment of tension had swelled between them, and dissipated just as quickly when Geoffrey sighed again, as if his breath alone could defrost the ice weighing down the air. “Don’t get me wrong, Reid, I’m… happy you’re here. It’s just disheartening to look back and remember a time when things were simpler.”

“Mm, I know the feeling.”

Geoffrey smiled humorlessly at his fingers laced together in his lap despite himself and nodded. “Ay, I bet you do.”

Disheartening as it may be to recall fonder days, it was reassuring that times were changing still whenever a soldier respectfully nodded at the leech doctor in passing or deigned to exchange pleasantries while he patched their wounds. Save for weathering the brunt of the occasional ingrate’s ire, the more time he spent around the Guard the less he found himself having to defend the most banal of his actions to the more suspicious members. He noticed they were more likely to leave him alone to wander lately, rather than having no less than three pairs of eyes on him at all times as they had initially, and he wondered if Geoffrey had said something to them or if they’d collectively decided that spying on him yielded less fruitful results than it was worth. The thought passed quickly, as he doubted the leader would jeopardize himself more than he already had by scolding his men for doing their jobs, and his vouching for Jonathan in the first place had already shook the very foundations of the Priwen order to its core. No need to press his luck any further. Still, Reid breathed a little easier each time one of them acknowledged his existence with a distinctive lack of vitriol. 

Some of the younger, more open-minded members even seemed to take a liking to the doctor, and followed him about with endless questions and the bubbling enthusiasm endemic in youths who’d yet to have their natural curiosity bled out of them. Perhaps that’s why younger individuals liked Dr. Reid; his childlike wonder at the world had never been sated, and they found a kindred spirit within him. 

“What does blood taste like?” the scrawny teen asked him from behind, trying to watch over Reid’s impossibly tall shoulder as he held a beaker to the light. 

“Blood tastes like blood,” he explained patiently. “It’s my tastes that have changed. An apple will always chemically taste the same no matter who eats it, but it will seem different to each individual.” It was only a matter of time before the boy would exhume another question, but Reid didn’t mind his prattling. It was nice to have company every now and then other than doctors and the dying. 

“What does it taste like to you then?”

Reid frowned but kept his focus on his work. “Blood. It tastes the same as it did when I was human, but now it tastes good.”

“But good how?” the boy insisted.

“Good like…” Reid hummed thoughtfully and set the beaker down. As a scientist, he was unwilling to disregard an honest inquiry. Knowledge only came from a readiness to ask questions after all. “It’s difficult to explain. It’s not the taste that I crave so much as the… What would you even call it? Warmth, perhaps? It’s as though I can feel the life force of the creature when I drink, and it’s that essence that gives the blood its taste. Truly difficult to explain… Be thankful you’ll never know.” 

“How do your teeth fit in your mouth?” 

Reid glanced over his shoulder impassively before flashing him an overbearingly wide smile, exposing stark white fangs crowded between average human teeth. “They retract to an extent, but never truly go away. I will forever smile just a little tighter in the presence of unwitting humans, lest they connect the dots.”

“Do they hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

“Quit bothering the doctor,” a phantom called from the door. The boy’s spine straightened instantly and his shoulders drew back, and though it was a bit delayed the gesture was an admirable effort. “At ease, boy,” McCullum waved him off as he entered the doctor’s study. 

“We have to stop meeting like this, you lurking in my doorway,” Jonathan taunted. 

“Save your flirting for someone who gives a shite, eh? I’m here to see what use you’ve made of your funds.”

“Our funds, McCullum. My research will benefit all, Priwen included.”

McCullum said nothing while he trailed fingers across book spines and half empty vials as he passed Reid’s many shelves, and he could feel the doctor’s gaze on his back all the while. He stopped in front of the young rookie who glanced up at him with starstruck eyes and with a jerk of his head towards the door, McCullum dismissed him. “Find something to do.” He felt no pity when the boy shrank under his steely gaze, but was proud enough when he pulled his chin from his chest to excuse himself from the room with quiet dignity. When he’d made his way round the room and back to Reid, he leaned a hand on the countertop, chest much too close to the doctor’s arm to be friendly. “Pretty words, Dr. Leech,” he mumbled. 

The vampire eyed him doubtfully, considering where McCullum would inevitably draw the line, and replied with a question in his hushed tone. “To match my pretty clothes.” He caught the quick dart of McCullum’s glance to the empty doorway, agitated, and cast a perceptive sweep of his own, confident no one else lingered on this lower floor of the building. “We’re alone,” he assured the man. 

“Must be nice, being so confident,” McCullum replied as he hoisted himself up to sit on the counter, displacing several notebooks and tools, while Reid irritably snatched at shifting beakers and stands before they could topple to the floor. 

“Yes, well, it does come with a fairly high price,” he groused and set his armful down on another table, but McCullum pulled him back by the sleeve of his lab coat until he came to stand between the hunter’s knees and his irritation was dispelled just as suddenly as the heat of warm palms slipped beneath his jacket. They rested there, flat against the small of his back, and Reid had no other thought in his head when he leaned in to kiss the man. 

The countertop was high and stood above Jonathan’s hip, and he had to lift his chin to meet the other’s lips, but it placed the hunter at the perfect height to sneak his arms around his middle in a ironclad embrace that arched the man’s back and melded him to Reid’s chest. Reid could feel his ribs shift against him to accommodate a heavy sigh, and the muscles under his firm hands softened in tandem. 

When moments like these could be stolen, Reid felt more human than he had in years. Since before turning, before all the vampires and the bloodshed and disease, before even the war and the bullets and his first taste of the true cruelty of human nature, these were the precious instances that soothed his soul like salve to a burn and melted his memories of the hurt as if they were only visions of old dreams looming beneath murky waters. He was desperate for them, embarrassingly so, but McCullum’s continuous instigations curbed Jonathan’s sheepish self-consciousness almost as much as the kisses themselves. He showered Geoffrey with them, capturing his lips, peppering his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his eyelids, everything within his reach he wanted to praise and adore, and Geoffrey basked in the attention. The deep and contented rumble that rolled through his chest when Reid laid his tongue to his neck satisfied him like water in a desert and he smiled against the skin appreciatively. McCullum’s ever-present scarf hid the evidence well, but still the doctor was careful after their first encounter and the subsequent questions it invoked, and even now the hunter remained apprehensive. 

“Watch your marks,” he warned lowly with his head lolled back and throat bared to the other’s tongue. 

“Mm,” Reid acknowledged briefly before his eyes snapped open suddenly. McCullum took notice of his pause and froze in place, holding his breath before the doctor straightened and cursed softly. He straightened the scarf and did his best to cover the traces of himself littered across McCullum’s person and McCullum took the cue and smoothed the imprint of his fist from the doctor’s lapels before he hastily slid from the counter. Footfalls echoed from the hallway, drawing nearer as each of them briskly preened the other back into order, and Reid pressed a final lingering kiss to McCullum’s mouth before turning his back on him to reorganize his scattered notes just as a hefty brawler rounded the open door. McCullum was leaning leisurely against the long lab table dividing the room as if he hadn’t a care in the world; the picture of nonchalance. 

“McCullum,” the brawler greeted obliviously before nodding at Reid as if in afterthought, “Doctor. I wanted to talk to ya about this last Orichalcum batch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Davies is swindlin’ us, I swear he’s cuttin’ the goods with somethin’ an’ it shows,” he ranted to Geoffrey who rolled his shoulders with a tired sigh. Every damn day it was always something. 

“Alright then,” the leader grumbled and stood to his full height, “‘spose now’s as good a time as any. Walk with me, Brooks.” He didn’t spare the doctor another glance before he left the room with Brooks in tow, and Reid refused to watch him go.


	2. The Enemy of My Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The discovery of a new Skal den puts Priwen in a tight spot, and the smartest plan might actually be to give the resident leech free reign. But just how much suspicion will that put on McCullum? And will Reid be up to the task?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter again, sorry! But I've got lots of ideas for this so expect a lengthy fic by the end of it all.

“We’ll need the heavies, all of ‘em.” 

“It’ll be a big hit, we’re bound to loose a handful.”

“Christ on the cross, Louie, they’re people, with names.”

“And they’re soldiers who know what they signed up for.”

“Enough,” McCullum put a stop to the overlapping bickers before they could crescendo onto flying chairs and broken noses. He stood at a window, away from the table of disgruntled captains huddled around a Whitechapel map that had seen better days, and chewed his bottom lip until the taste of blood brought him back to the room. “I won’t send in men with the expectation of casualties. Donovan’s right, this is human life we’re gamblin’ with, and I won’t ask them to pay that price, ‘specially not without a plan in place.” He turned back to the table and rested his weight on his knuckles, reviewing the map with a growing dread settling deep in his stomach. 

“We’ll need to flush ‘em, they’re too concentrated in their own lair. Scare ‘em, make ‘em scatter, then pick them off in the nights to come.”

“And set the bloody things loose in the city? There’ll be carnage! I’m not havin’ that civilian blood on my hands. We’re lucky enough they’re stayin’ put as much as they are.”

“And I’m not having the blood of my comrades on _my_ hands!”

“Enough!” McCullum enunciated to the woodgrain in the tabletop. “All you lot,” he addressed the room. “I’m not sending anyone to their graves over this, but I’m not willing to loose this opportunity either. Skal don’t stay secluded like this long, this many holing up all in one area is a chance I’m not passin’ up. So I need less arguing,” he side eyed each of the five men gathered with a distinctive glare, “and more ideas. How to fumigate a leech lair.”

Silence as the men surveyed each other. “Maybe we do just that. Seal them in, flush the place with gas, leave them to choke.”

McCullum shook his head and resumed prodding his lip with his teeth. “Can’t flood the sewers with that much chlorine. Too great a risk to the populace if it contaminates the water supply, our grenades down there are bad enough.”

“Explosives then, as much dynamite as we can sacrifice at once.”

McCullum had to chuckle at that, however darkly. “You’d collapse a third of Whitechapel, Crane would be running her dispensary out of a sewer pipe.”

“Then what’ve we left but a frontal assault? We’d be cut down by the sheer number of ‘em! Even if we win, we lose.” A hush fell over the group, each lost in thought and gloom, and McCullum grit his teeth again. Seems like he was doing that a lot these days. 

“Heavies,” he grumbled, “heavies we got. But I’m not about to lay them down like lambs at slaughter, so maybe quantity ain’t the way to go about it.” He sighed heavily and let his head hand before he regarded his men warily. This was not a route he wanted to consider, and it cast him in a precariously suspicious light, but if he had to bite a bullet to spare Priwen blood then so be it. “Hear me out…”

Reid sat at the head of the table with his arms crossed against his chest and a deep V between his eyebrows. “Wipe that bloody look from your face, leech, and pay attention. I’m not goin’ down there half-cocked.”

Reid raised a brow but kept his eyes forward, and the men around the table kept their eyes on him. “I get the sense this plan is fairly contested.” 

The bearded man to Reid’s immediate left slammed a fist on the table and jabbed a finger towards him. “It’s a fuckin’ terrible plan! I’d sooner turn my back to a lion than follow a leech into a scrap!”

“Shut it, Louie, we’re only talking.” McCullum looked to Reid across the lengthy table and pressed his palms to the wood. “Tell us your thoughts, Reid. I brought you on as a healer, but I think we all know well enough the chaos you’re capable of.” Without an immediate response, McCullum pressed on. “We’ve got two ways I see to best go about this. Firstly: You go in guns blazin’ alongside the rest of us and wreak as much havoc as you can as quickly as you can to thin their numbers so my boys can sort through the rest. The fly in the ointment being their reluctance to trust their back to a leech and your lack of training together. 

“The second option: You find a vantage point, survey the scene, and step in only when necessary. Let my men do their jobs and act as their last line of defense in the event they go down. You would be present for the explicit purpose of preventing casualties. Get to the wounded, get them to safety, get them patched up. I don’t wanna have to write a single fucking eulogy.” Reid pursed his lips and studied the table before him, sorting through it all, but McCullum’s nerves were strained and his patience was running dry. “Speak up, Reid,” he raised his voice. 

“I’m willing to participate in whatever capacity you find most suitable, but might I suggest a third option?” 

McCullum raised a brow in a mock image of the Ekon. “I’m all ears.”

“I’m happy to act as a field medic to support your brawlers, but the more men loose in the fray the higher the chance I won’t be able to keep track of them all when I need to most. I propose another plan entirely: Myself,” he presented simply. No one quite knew what to do with that. 

“…Yourself?” one of them repeated. “You mean to say just yourself? You’re mad, there’s got to be 30 Skal in that hoard, you’d be a dead man!”

“Might I remind you I’m already a dead man, and I’m unconcerned by that number, it’s within my capabilities.” He advocated directly to McCullum, “you would forgo the risk of casualties altogether, spend no ammunition, and I can rest easy knowing the scourge has been dealt with efficiently.”

“I’ve heard truer words out’ve a horse’s arse. You’re plottin’ something,” the bearded man challenged again. “Leeches side with leeches, you’d go in there just to tip ‘em off. Let ‘em run and come back here sayin’ you’ve done the deed so we’d be none the wiser while your mates skip free.”

“I can assure you these creatures are no mates of mine.”

“He’s got a point there, Doctor,” the commander admitted, “I trust your skills, I’ve seen them enough, but your word’s another matter,” McCullum played the room and Jonathan had to keep his eyes fastened to his to keep them from rolling in his skull. “I won’t send you alone, but I don’t hate the idea of a smaller, more elite team accompanying you. We’d serve as your backup, and your witnesses, to ensure the situation’s been handled.” Reid nodded and scratched his chin absentmindedly, purposely ignoring the sudden sputtering and arguments that sprung up on either side of him. 

“Ridiculous! You can’t trust a leech to do a man’s job-”

“Even if he could take on 30 by himself, that just leaves a half-starved Ekon alone with only a handful of our best men-”

“If he wants to take down as many as he can ‘fore they eat him alive I say let him take a whack-”

“What’s he even doin’ here!?”

“For fuck’s sake, shut it!” McCullum roared over the shouts. 

“McCullum, with all due respect this’s nonsense, ya can’t possibly-”

“You wanted more dynamite, Willcroft, I’ll do you one better and give you the deadliest bomb in all of England.”

“I don’t appreciate that analogy,” Reid interjected. 

“If it means saving ourselves from takin’ the brunt of it, I’m willing to lengthen the leech’s leash a bit,” the commander ignored him. 

“Really?” he responded flatly.

“There ya have it then. We’ll send Dr. Leech in with a small support group comprised of myself and two others. We’ll leave the mass to you and pick off the stragglers that think they can make a break for it.”

“McCullum-”

“Don’t ‘McCullum’ me. It’s decided, I’m not loosin’ men to stubbornness and that’s final. I’ll select the remaining two in the coming days, in the meantime, meeting adjourned. Dismissed.”

Shouts resumed, hurled at his back as Geoffrey left the room, but there was nothing left to be said. Reid followed shortly after, not keen on lingering in any confined space with five angry hunters, and caught up to him quickly, white coat flowing after him like a villain’s cape. 

“Will they be alright?” he asked. McCullum huffed and rolled his head in circles to stretch the cramping muscles in his neck. 

“They’ll get over it. They’ve got no choice, and they know I’m right. We can’t sacrifice men for the sake of pride.”

“How surprisingly mature of you.”

“Watch it.”

They walked together down the corridor and through a common room to the stairwell where they descended to the main floor, but when Reid turned to continue to his basement room McCullum was already a step ahead of him, hands stuffed in his pockets and not waiting to see if Reid would follow. 

Since Reid hadn’t invited him, the doctor left McCullum to his own devices as he shucked his coat and hung it up behind the door along with his tie and set about removing his waistcoat. When he turned to the room he saw McCullum had beat him to the punch once again and had already removed his boots, and was now sitting on the doctor’s bed and unbuttoning his shirt, heavy jacket long since discarded on the floor. Although a bit surprised at the gesture without any hint of a mood being set, Reid wasn’t one to shy away from an offered gift and he pulled his shirt over his head to toss it next to McCullum’s forgotten jacket. 

“Did you lock the door?” the hunter asked as he draped himself over the doctor’s back once he’d sat to remove his shoes.

“Of course,” he replied and was immediately pulled down to the bed. McCullum lay on his stomach with an arm lashed across Reid’s chest, detaining him against the mattress and chaining him to McCullum’s side. The doctor lay on his back, side pressed to the hunter’s, and stared at the ceiling in silence. 

“…Geoffrey?” The hunter responded with a grunt into the pillow. “What are you doing?”

“Sleepin’.”

Reid shifted to look at him, face buried in blankets and hair fanning the pillow, and smiled to himself. “Here, under the covers. You’ll catch cold,” he chastised and tugged in vain at the blankets wadded up beneath them. McCullum grumbled but rolled enough for Reid to slip the comforter out from under and throw it across them both. Grumpy and tired yet warm and comfortable, McCullum burrowed deeper into the mass of blanket before eventually rolling onto his back, taking Reid with him. The vampire had no qualms against being manhandled, and the warmth he stole as he rested his head on Geoffrey’s toned chest eased his soul like a hotspring in the dead of winter, and he shamelessly wrapped his arms around the man’s bare waist to clutch at him as if he were a drowning man clinging to a life raft. A contented purr rattled in his chest when McCullum’s thumb traced the line of his shoulder blade, and he could feel the commander’s laugh vibrate under his cheek. 

It was unexpected, McCullum’s sudden sensitivity. Their prior encounters were born of lust and opportunity rather than comfort and security, but it was… nice. To feel warm. To feel protected. It wasn’t a feeling Jonathan had been privy to for a great many years, and he hadn’t realized just how much he’d isolated himself until the feeling of another’s warmth made his arms feel weak and his chest ache in blooming satisfaction. Another wave of bashfulness washed over him when he gazed at McCullum’s relaxed expression, as if he was blissfully unaffected by the surge of domesticity, and his stare must have been just a hair too probing if the tug of a smile at Geoffrey’s lips was any indication. 

“Sleep, Reid,” he ordered quietly without opening his eyes, “we’ve a helluva week ahead of us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am soft


	3. A Bite More Than You Can Chew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With an invasion imminent, Reid and his new Priwen brethren must learn to fight as a team. In theory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a feeling McCullum is a gambling man.

“Tell me again why I’m supposed to let a leech take a swipe at me,” the gunner asked for the third time. 

“Parker, I’m gonna break yer feckin’ kneecaps if I have to hear that one again.”

Reid stood patiently on the opposite side of the dusty courtyard, waiting with arms limp at his sides while the gunner and brawler bickered and swore at everything in sight. They were accompanied by eight other hunters, all gripping their weapons tightly and shifting with growing unease. The cleared away courtyard they occupied was overlooked on all sides by two stories worth of Priwen bunks and living quarters, and men hung out the windows to jostle for a better view of the arena. McCullum himself stood at the center of it all, arms crossed and expression stern while the chaos around him grew louder as the men cheered and hollered from above. With a single hand raised to the uninvited crowd he calmed them to relative silence.

“Ladies and Leeches,” he taunted to a resounding wave of jeers, “as many of you know, Parker and Wickens have been tasked with supporting Dr. Reid and myself on an expedition to eliminate the Skal hoard beneath Whitechapel. And just like it’s important for all of us to train together to better operate as a team, so should Reid be included in our sparring, eh? What say we rough him up a bit?” Another burst of excitement from the crowd, roaring with life and out for blood. 

“Is this really necessary?” Reid piped up from his lonely corner. McCullum gave him a smile that was entirely too soft considering the calls for dismemberment from above, and Reid was more than a little miffed at the way his bones wanted to melt at the sight of him. 

“It has merit, Reid,” he strode closer to call over the roar of the crowd. “If you’re gonna be part of a team, they need to get used to how you fight, and you them. You need to be an effective unit.” He stopped in front of the doctor and let his gaze overtly rake the man’s figure, too far away from prying eyes for anyone to notice the mirth that lit his own. “‘Sides, it’ll be good for them to practice how to deal with big league leeches.”

Reid’s face still looked like a child’s who’d been told bedtime was coming early tonight. “I’ve fought some of them before,” he shot a glance over McCullum’s shoulder at the familiar anxious faces, “and alongside of others. Our patrols would intercept often enough.”

“Good, so since you’ve done it before, you should have no problem with it now.”

“Geoffrey-” he wanted to argue but the man had already turned his back and returned to the center of the yard. 

“Are we ready?” he called one last time to a final round of applause. “Right then, I want as clean a fight as a leech match can get. No fatalities-” he looked to Reid- “and no headshots-” he looked to the men gathered opposite. “Incapacitate, not discorporate.” The commander backtracked quickly to the edge of the yard as he began the countdown. 

“On yer mark,” he bellowed. “Get set!” The army flailing fists and hollering war cries above them couldn’t drown out McCullum’s gruff shouts. “Fight!” he called and stuck fast to the wall out of the way of flying bullets and bloodspears. 

The gunners struck first from the back lines, forcing Reid to dodge left and into the swing of a chaplain’s already arching staff that would have connected solidly with the doctor’s ribs had his form not suddenly dispersed in a wisp of smoke. A shout drew the chaplain’s attention to where Reid had rematerialized several yards away and had a brawler by the lapels, feet kicking wildly while suspended off the ground, before he was thrown across the clearing and straight into the mass of a poor unsuspecting enforcer who collapsed instantly under the weight.

The fight went quickly from there. Reid would whirl through one barrage of bullets after the next, only to twirl into range of a flame thrower and singe the tail of his coat as he deftly danced away. The men could only pray for lucky strikes when he dared to claw his way close enough, and their efforts to corral him into a corner only looked promising before he sent a shockwave of pulsing shadow rippling across the dirt that knocked them from their feet entirely. The vampire wielded no weapon, but even against ten men the odds were in his favor. He cast no blood spears, and when he did deploy an elusive shadow bomb, they lacked their usual deadly spikes and vigor, and though he made no taunts or jabs it was clear he was only toying with them. 

The only beacon of hope the men had of turning the tide was when the chaplain caught the doctor’s back, and with lightning reflexes thrust his staff into the ground before him and prayed with the strength of an entire congregation in his heart, eyes shut tight and his knuckles surely white beneath his gloves. Reid gasped audibly and stumbled, dropping a knee to the dirt and clutching at his head as the blast of holy light flooded over him and filled his body to the brim with a dizzying heat. A sharp cry tore from his throat and he winced when a bullet ripped through his shoulder, and a second followed into his ribcage to puncture a useless lung. Just as quickly as it had come, the crucifix’s blinding glare dissipated into a dull and ignorable background hum, but still the lingering ringing in the doctor’s ears left his head spinning and his stomach in distracting knots. A brawler’s swift kick in his fractured rib sent him rolling across the dirt and he missed the way McCullum flinched from the sidelines. Gathering his knees beneath him, the doctor pulled himself up to kneel and survey the men closing in around him and managed to deflect a wave of bullets with the last of his drying blood. In the time it took him to reclaim his breath and stamina, his shield was thinning, the bullets showed no sign of slowing, and a noxious cloud of gas was drawing steadily nearer to his back. He needed a moment, and so in a confusing blur of stealth, he vanished. 

The bullets stopped, and an eery hush fell over the makeshift arena, so thick even the crowd had stifled their cacophony. “Easy, boys… Hold your ground,” the tallest of the gunners placated, unaware the doctor ghosted not a foot behind him, unnoticed and unafraid. When he turned in place in the center of the courtyard to make note of each target’s location, he dropped the shadows clinging to his form, and the crowd immediately burst into screeches and urgent pointing, a belated warning to their comrades, but one issued far too late. Reid already had his arms raised before him, palms facing the ground and long fingers extended, before he suddenly dropped to a knee and slammed his hands flat to the earth, claws digging into the turf like an anchor before he launched himself forward and was gone again in a blur. 

The chaplain was the first to fall, taken unawares from behind as Reid delivered a swift and crippling blow between the shoulder blades, dropping the heavy guardsman to the dirt where he remained. The others fell in a similar fashion in astonishingly quick succession, the next man to be claimed still startled from the man hitting the ground before him, until just as suddenly a single lone Ekon stood surrounded by the groaning wreckage of the once proud battalion. The jumble of coughs and moans of the bodies strewn at his feet was the only noise in the arena, as the crowd had fallen oppressively silent, unsure whether to cheer for the winner or curse the bastard who’d decimated their brethren. It was left to McCullum to break the quiet. 

“…Shit,” he muttered as he pushed off from the wall to inspect the carnage. He knelt beside the chaplain, who had managed to gather his knees beneath him, and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “That’ll do, soldier.” Reid was at the man’s other side in a heartbeat, and held a gentle grip under his arm to help him to his feet, which was accepted with a wary glance. McCullum met his gaze over the chaplain’s head, and the Ekon looked as weary as the rest of them, his coat in ribbons and an otherwise lethal amount of blood splayed across his chest that saturated his shirt and had run and dried in rivulets down his arm. “Let’s get you stitched up.”

When the men had been tended to by the very hands that had massacred them, they brooded and kicked at stones as their colleagues meandered from their windows to offer consolation. 

“Quite a show you put on, Reid. We oughta sell tickets,” McCullum jested. 

“Ha! The Priwen Leech Circus,” a cadet overheard and chimed in, “make a fortune.” 

“The dawn of a new era. Instead of gutting leeches, we’ll collar ‘em,” McCullum added with a smirk and a good laugh from the surrounding men. 

Reid smiled tiredly but let him have his fun. “Be wary when filing fangs,” was all he warned. “If you manage to subdue them at all.”

“I managed you well enough,” the commander waved him off, “one way or another, I won out in the end, didn’t I?” The pretentious grin he wore aggravated the Ekon to no end, and Reid could feel the trickle of flame eating away at his patience. 

“Funny how the things we once thought we wanted are rarely our intended path. But as I recall, our last joust ended without you winning much more than half a dozen broken ribs.” McCullum’s smile faltered enough to satisfy the doctor, but failed to fall completely from his face. He chuckled at the ground and shifted his hands to his hips. 

“Maybe so. It’s a shame that ungodly power of yours keeps you from a proper scrap. Then I’d show ya how a real man lays down a beatin’,” he jabbed with a step closer into the doctor’s space. Reid felt no need to back down and regarded him cooly, very aware of the eyes weighing heavily on the both of them. 

“Should a true hunter not be able to handle himself against his intended foe? My kind are your job after all.”

“You sound like you’re lookin’ for another lesson, leech,” McCullum’s bright eyes bore deep into Jonathan’s own, but he suspected if he looked away now he would lose a game of which he had no notion of the rules. Geoffrey bore no more desire to fight than Reid, but they were both men of pride and knew stubbornness in equal measure. 

“Can’t take that lyin’ down, McCullum, tha’s a challenge if I ever ‘eard one,” an eavesdropper threw out. Several overlapping affirmations layered the pressure heavy on McCullum’s back, but Reid looked as gratingly unperturbed as ever, only serving to enrage him more. It wasn’t wise to pick a fight with a leech over trivial pursuits, but McCullum could count on one hand the number of times he’d backed away from a brawl, much less one with an audience and a well-earned opponent to boot. 

“Alright, alright,” he settled the rising crowd he’d amassed, “let’s say I agreed to a rematch-” he cocked his head and raised his chin to Reid “-what’s the wager?”

“Pardon?”

“Let’s make it a bit more interestin’, eh? What’ll you give me if I win?”

Reid huffed and rolled his eyes to the stars. “What of mine could you possibly even want?”

McCullum’s face was careful considering the company, but his eyes were alight and the corners of his mouth betrayed a wry smile that shook a spark of understanding loose from the base of Reid’s spine. “I’m sure I’d think of something,” he said evenly. Jonathan tried not to shiver. 

“Hm,” the doctor acknowledged the challenge. “Very well, I’ll wager… ‘something’ to be determined, against…” the doctor thoughtfully hummed and stroked his beard habitually. It ought to be something more than just an object he desired, something that McCullum would be reluctant to relinquish, something to make it worth the stakes…

“I’ll bet a favor of your choosing, against your room.”

McCullum pulled back a bit and blinked at him, bewildered and nonverbal. “What?” he finally managed.

“Your office. It’s the nicest room here, better than my own, and twice the size.”

Geoffrey glared daggers at him as if the venom in his gaze could kill the idea out of Reid’s own head. He crossed his arms over his chest and the frown he wore looked a natural part of his visage as if it were carved into him. “I’ve got the big room ‘cuz I’m the big dog,” he grunted, unamused, over the snickers and chortling of the men at his back.

“And if you beat me you’ll have proven it. But until then the fact remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

“Ha, alright Reid, you talk a big game, let’s see if you can back it up. Jackson!” the commander barked, startling the blonde rookie across the yard. “Go fetch the sword in my office, behind the desk near the window,” he instructed when the young man presented himself. 

“Hold on just a moment,” Reid stopped the lad with a hand to the shoulder without dropping McCullum’s gaze, and the boy paused uncertainly. “I’ve just been brutalized by a small army of trained mercenaries, surely this can wait another night.” 

“We’ve plans in the works, leech, we haven’t the time for these kinds of things at the drop of a hat. This is designated sparring time. Take it or leave it.”

“I’m not certain I have the capacity for another round.”

“Good,” he smirked, “that’ll level the field some.”

“Be reasonable, McCullum,” Jonathan pouted indignantly, "I’m grievously wounded, I’ll need a moment to heal. The last time we fought you very nearly ran me through.”

“I also had the blood of a king in my veins and false sunlight in the rafters.” 

Reid suppressed a shudder. “So I recall. All the same, I insist I be allotted one of my serums at the very least.”

McCullum rolled his eyes in mock exasperation but relented. “Fine, you get one of yer fancy little vials. You’ve got til I get back here with my sword to get it.”

When they reconvened the good doctor was looking much ruddier, his pallor having rescinded and been replaced with a flush that was not his own. “If you’re ready then,” he called out clearly at the hunter’s approach. McCullum’s sword was hefted over his shoulder where the bulk of it rested comfortably before he leveled it at the doctor’s chest. Where once the crowd above them had been roaring and active, they now mumbled nervously to themselves, a jittery buzz in the air that tingled at the base of McCullum’s skull and made Reid’s fingers twitch. 

There was no preamble this round, no countdown or starting gun to signal when either opponent would move, but McCullum knew all too well that Reid favored his left foot, and the subtle shift of his weight told the hunter now was the time. He dropped the point of his sword and grasped the hilt with both hands just as gnarled claws clashed against the cold steel, and he pushed Reid back with a boot heel to the gut. 

Reid’s feet slid through the dirt, and he leapt back an extra yard as McCullum’s sword sliced through his shadow. He was given no time to recover before a bolt sunk into his chest, Geoffrey’s aim as unerring as ever, and he hissed as it took flesh with it when he yanked it harshly back out. A slender fang slit through the fragile vein of his own wrist, and the immediate flood of relief it brought to the throbbing just below his heart was welcomed. 

“Needin’ a pick me up already, leech? Best be careful, we’re just getting started,” Geoffrey taunted and held his sword defensively, knees bent and at the ready. Gratingly, he was right. Needing to heal so soon was not a good sign, and the doctor threw a blood barrier between the two of them when Geoffrey lunged again, steel sinking into the coagulation with a sickening thwack. 

Reid couldn’t put his finger on what exactly put Geoffrey in another class above all the rest, but his cuts were quick, his movements calculated, and each blow he leveled at the doctor would be a finisher if he let it. The hunter was surprisingly elegant, with the grace of a cat coupled with the strength of a bear, and clever as a fox. He fought with grit and forethought, always with a backup plan to counter should his first strike fall through. 

A rare moment of opportunity occurred when a vicious swing brought McCullum’s momentum too far around, presenting the barest sliver of his back to the doctor, who leapt at the exposure and sunk short, malformed claws into the commander’s left flank and gripped his hair with the other hand to pull his head aside. Reid’s fangs were throbbing, the ever-present hunger thrumming all throughout his body, and though it fogged his mind, he hesitated, and Geoffrey froze as well. They paused in a mock embrace, Jonathan gripping McCullum from behind with his chest pressed against the other’s back, and McCullum’s swordless hand clung to the wrist of the hand that had buried its nails into his side, and although Jonathan’s parted lips brushed the skin of Geoffrey’s bare neck no teeth closed around the skin. Neither man dared to breath as the dust kicked up around them began to filter and settle. The crowd had once again fallen silent, but every soldier in the compound had eyes on Reid and fingers on triggers. 

“Reid,” Geoffrey breathed, and the spell was broken. Reid exhaled raggedly across McCullum’s neck, and just as the hand in Geoffrey’s hair slackened a fraction the man yanked his head forward and out of his grasp just to slam it back hard into Reid’s already crooked nose. A spray of blood erupted from Jonthan’s face and he released his claws as he yelped and sprang away, stifling the flow as best he could. Geoffrey whirled to face him again, and with another bite to his own wrist, Jonathan healed the damage and the river of blood stopped immediately. He watched McCullum curiously, but the man’s face was unreadable and the way he circled the doctor made it clear the battle was far from over, and the moment had passed. 

And so the fight went on, blows blocked and traded in equal measure, and just when it looked as though a strike would land true and the show would end, the other countered and lashed out just as deftly. Reid thought he finally had McCullum cornered when a narrowly deflected spear threw the hunter off kilter, and a quick jab to the solar plexus sent him sprawling into the dirt, but when he loomed over to pin him down Geoffrey flung a fistful of dirt into the air, pelting Reid’s face with debris. The hunter rolled and bolted while the doctor swiped furiously at watery eyes, and the man abandoned all restraint when he rounded and rushed the vampire with the speed of a cheetah and dropped his shoulder to hit him squarely in the side with the force of a rhino. Wind wooshed from the doctor’s lungs and he hit the ground hard and the weight of McCullum straddling his chest prevented him from pulling in air. He let his head lie where it’d landed while he gazed up at McCullum smirking down at him with unprecedented fervor, the man’s flanks heaving and beads of sweat rolling from his temples and matting his hair to his forehead. His sword, Jonathan couldn’t help but notice, was held out in front of him, the tip hovering innocuously above the hollow of his throat. 

“I win,” Geoffrey conjectured. 

“Bold of you to assume,” Reid replied. 

McCullum’s brow twitched as if it wanted to furrow, but it was gone as quickly as it’d come. “I’ve got a sword to your throat,” he informed him redundantly.

“Then do something with it. Go on. Show your men you can finish me,” he said unbothered. McCullum frowned and allowed his brow to wrinkle truly, and Reid could see the grip on the hilt tighten. Quickly, he raised the sword high above his head and Reid watched the muscles of his shoulders ripple and his arms flex as he reached the apex of his ascent and then, suddenly, he froze in place, muscles still tense and hands high above him. 

Strain was evident across his face, and Reid could sense the insistent tugging against the control he imposed on the hunter’s blood. He grunted and struggled against his imperceptible bonds, barely managing to squirm while still straddling the doctor’s chest, and he grit his teeth against the urge to scream. 

“What did you do,” he demanded unnecessarily through still clenched teeth and cramping muscles. Reid didn’t dignify that with a response, and instead cocked his fist back as far as he was able with his back still pressed to the ground, and smashed an Ekon-strength punch straight into Geoffrey’s chest. 

The sword clattered in the dust beside him as the doctor rolled into a crouch, and immediately charged the hunter who had crumpled in the dirt a few feet away. Valiantly, Geoffrey pushed himself to his hands and knees, sucking air in desperate, inefficient gasps with a hand clutched to his aching sternum, and although he was quick, he wasn’t quicker than an Ekon. Jonathan was on him before he could get a single foot beneath him, and his back hit the ground at the same moment a cold hand found each wrist. He lay there a moment, still a bit dazed, and gazed up at what he thought should have been endless night sky, but instead was the endless blue of Reid’s pale eyes. 

“It doesn’t much look like you’ve won,” the vampire goaded. 

“Fuck you,” Geoffrey wheezed with what little air he had. 

“End this, Geoffrey, we’re done here.” McCullum swallowed but let his head go slack and hit the ground with a thunk. He was tired. He was bleeding. It felt like he’d been fighting for hours and maybe he had. And he wanted a shower and a nap. With a nod from his captive, Jonathan sat back on his haunches, releasing his wrists. Geoffrey lay in the dirt a moment more, collecting his breath and taking stock of his wounds, and he noted a good sized gash in his right thigh in addition to the punctures in his side and though his shoulder ached like mad, everything else seemed to be standard contusions and run of the mill bruises. He didn’t notice Reid’s extended hand until it was waved directly in front of his face, and he sat up slowly to slap his grip around the leech’s forearm and haul himself to weary feet. 

The crowd had been waiting for a sign of confirmation, and that seemed to be it. It wasn’t the wild beastly cheers of a mob gone mad, but it was a proud and sportsmanlike applause that McCullum appreciated nonetheless. Soldiers rushed from the windows and through the barracks, and soon enough the courtyard was flooded with bodies all rushing to pat the commander on the back and drown him in undue praise. Even Reid was accosted as soldiers swarmed him to wildly reenact the best bits of the battle as though he hadn’t been there. 

Even in the midst of the chaos, Reid never lost sense of where McCullum drifted, the scent of his blood still hanging heavy in the air, and when he’d been pulled too far away for his liking the doctor quietly excused himself from the clamor to go tug at the leader’s elbow. “We’ll want to disinfect those,” he explained when he held the hunter’s gaze and nodded to his sluggishly bleeding thigh. 

“Ay, ‘spose so,” he agreed while prodding at the ragged wound. 

Reid smiled at him strangely with his usual professionalism, but this smile was layered with a veneer of complacency that made McCullum want to seethe. “Then please, step into my new office,” he said and left McCullum to follow. 

“What? Wait, Reid, you cutthroat son of a bitch. Don’t- don’t you dare!” He hollered when the vampire didn’t slow and he hustled after, shoving men from his path with only a mild limp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next couple chapters I expect to go quickly, I've been writing this story waaaay out of order.


	4. At Your Convenience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lovers that kill together, stay together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not proof read, sorry 😬

“Hold here, something’s coming,” Reid held an arm outstretched to block the mercenaries path and the neatly tailored trench coat sleeve nearly smacked McCullum in the chest. He glared at the doctor from the corner of his eye. 

“Don’t ‘spose you’ve anymore detail?” Reid either didn’t pick up on the irritation that had seeped into McCullum’s tone or, more likely, elected to ignore it and kept his eyes straight ahead, gaze lost in the consuming depths of the sewer tunnel far past where McCullum’s human sight fell short. 

“Just once I want it ta be somethin’ nice, like a bunny rabbit maybe… or a kitten,” Parker mumbled almost inaudibly while bringing up the rear, the stock of his rifle never faltering from its place buried in his shoulder. 

“You volunteered for this mission,” Wickens reminded him. 

“What is a man but a string of regrets?” the gunner joked humorlessly while examining the tunnel walls down the sight of the rifle. The brawler huffed a laugh as stale as the foul air attempting to choke them all. 

“Quiet,” McCullum grunted when Reid began to move again. He glided forward, silent and with intent, knees bent at the ready like a panther dissolving into the night, and the trio gave him a generous lead before they followed.

Craning his head around a corner, Reid gestured them to slow once more and motioned for McCullum to peer around him, which he did with great care to keep as close to the wall as possible while maintaining distance between himself and Reid’s chest. He glanced around the wall to which the doctor pressed his back and counted aloud four Skal, either scratching mindlessly at the stone of the wall or gnawing questionable objects that McCullum presumed once held names. The space before him was a room at the very least, rather than another stretch of confining tunnel, but it was still more cramped than he’d prefer for a direct assault. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. 

“Okay,” he decided pulling back round the corner, “here’s the plan. Four total, two against the wall, two to the open. Can you throw a shadow bomb big enough to hit ‘em each from the middle?” he addressed the doctor who nodded his affirmation. “Good, Parker, you lag behind n’ pick off the two wall crawlers from here. Wickens and I’ll take the pair a stragglers, they look like runners. Loaded?” Parker chambered a round while Wickens readied his club and with a nod from all three, McCullum delegated Reid to give the signal. 

Jonathan returned to the wall and peered around again and with a raise of his hand and a clench of his fist drew a slither of shadow from every corner of the room, collecting and turning them over at the center of the congregation with an eery feel of sentience. The skals took no notice of the blackness drowning their feet, until Reid whispered “now,” and flexed his fist in tight to his chest. McCullum leapt from the tunnel with Wickens close at his heels just in time to watch the shadows inflate like an ink balloon before rupturing into perfectly neat spikes of lightless lethality. True to McCullum’s prediction, the two leeches to his right were blown back with exploding force and hurled into the hard stone brick behind them, but McCullum paid them no mind as he rushed past and vaulted over the dazed Skal crouched in front of him to leap at the one still standing at the edge of the room. He could hear the startling bang in the enclosed space, followed in quick succession by another, and wasted no time in cleaving the angrily screeching Skal from hip to shoulder with a vicious upstroke that slicked corrupted blood in a neat line from the floor and up the wall to the ceiling. He turned to see Wickens land a solid wack to his own opponent’s jaw that shattered it entirely and was left to hang limply from its scabby cheeks, tongue lolling like a sick panting dog before he finished it with another crushing blow to the crown of its head that sunk it to the floor where it finally lay silent without a twitch. A glance around the room proved Parker had done his part as well, with the remaining two lying in heaps and missing significant chunks of skull. Just like that it was over, they reconvened, and the quiet resumed. 

McCullum wiped the steel of his blade in the crook of his elbow and kept his voice level as he came down from the rush. “I always love it when a plan comes together.”

“I don’t see a way down, do you?” Reid asked.

“Not immediately.”

They’d been walking for some time following the natural flow of the tunnels deeper into the bowels of London, and the farther they went the louder the minute sound of trickling water became. With each turn they took the sound grew, until the walls of the passage fell away into the largest room they’d stumbled upon yet and the roar of a rushing river beckoned them. The cavern was split, with an upper level walkway lining the room and overlooking the greywater that flowed from one enormous gate in the wall just below their feet and cascaded down into the pool at the bottom with a crushing force before it flowed to the other side and exited the room through yet another tunnel, one lined on either side with concrete sidewalks. In other words; their way forward.

“Oy, boss, here we go,” Wickens called over. The rumbling of the waterfall was thunderous, and though it wasn’t completely deafening one had to shout to be heard. The brawler waved to them from the far wall where the moss slicked brick of the floor gave way to thick metal grating and revealed the water beneath their feet. “I found a hatch!”

With the other’s gathered round, the brawler pulled at the iron ring embedded in the grate, and McCullum rounded the square outline in the floor to help him heave. With a resounding crash of metal on metal they threw back the cover and peered into the depths at the rushing water beneath them, separated only by a rusting descending ladder that wobbled horrifically when McCullum kicked it with a heavy boot. It fastened to the underside of the grate beneath their feet and ended a few feet above the concrete sidewalk lining either side of the deluge. 

“Welp,” Wickens muttered staring at the hole, “we’re not gettin’ any younger.” With a resilience that impressed them all, the brawler swung a leg to the first rung and curled his fingers through the grate as he lowered himself carefully through the opening. He descended slowly, in controlled motions so as not to swing the ladder as he slipped beneath the floor and into open air, taking his time and securing proper footholds. McCullum went next, following the brawler’s lead and watching the placement of his feet. 

Over the nearing rush of the water, it was difficult to make out the groan of tired steel, but the vibrations that ran through McCullum’s hands through his cold grip on the ladder was impossible to mistake. A harsh creak, a muffled curse, and a deceivingly quiet snap was all the warning the men received before Wicken’s deep baritone of a wail was echoing off the stoney walls, and McCullum whipped his gaze over his shoulder in time to see him plummet into the pavement below with a heart-stopping crunch, the remains of the bottom half of the ladder splintered into shards around him like scattered toothpicks, brittle as ice. McCullum heard himself in tandem with Parker bellow the brawler’s name, and the only solace to be found was the unholy curses that rang out from the depths. Wickens lay on his side gasping tortured breaths, but alive and swearing like a sailor, rolling, clutching, and clawing at his shin without relief.

“Shit.” No sooner had the curse left McCullum’s lips than he felt a rush of air across his back. He looked up but saw only Parker’s wild eyes staring past him from the open grate, wide and terrified, and when he looked down again he saw Reid had dropped through the opening to the dirty stone below as if it had been five feet rather than twenty. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. He adjusted his grip to better view the scene, leaving one hand to cling to a rung and the other to cup his mouth. “How’s it look, Reid?” he called to the doctor.

The lack of an immediate answer wasn’t promising, and Parker’s frantic cursing was less than productive, but from McCullum’s vantage point he could see the doctor working over the wounded man with impressive efficiency. He had him laid out on the concrete and had torn his pant leg off at the knee to inspect the most egregious of his wounds, and his breath must’ve come back to him well enough since his screeching and profanity only burgeoned in volume.

“Fractured tibia, ankle is broken as well but the femur is intact,” Reid reported loud enough for the team to hear. He turned back to Wickens to assess him directly. “Your shoulder, it looks dislocated. Here, can you sit?” With effort, the brawler stiffly shuffled to prop himself up on his good elbow and allowed Reid to slip his arms around his chest from behind to drag him back against the wall, his bum leg jostling painfully along the ground and drawing more curses from his lips. 

“What’s going on Reid? Tell us what you see, dammit,” McCullum barked, frustrated at his own ineptitude. 

“Give me a moment,” the doctor called back without a glance, working instead on fashioning a splint from the contents of his satchel. “Don’t move,” he ordered the brawler who had lapsed into noisily shallow breathing. The treatment was tolerated with only mild hisses of pain as the leg was immobilized and wrapped, and Reid moved to his shoulder next. “Easy, take deep breaths for me.” 

The brawler glared at him through a sheen of sweat already beginning to bead thick upon his brow and seethed. “I would if it wasn’t fuckin’ killin’ me,” he ground out. His good arm was wrapped tightly round his chest and clutched at his side, and Reid could see the blood in his body surging to heal the damage. His teeth ached and he swallowed hard. 

“You have some bruised ribs, though I can’t say if any have been fractured, but none look completely broken and neither lung’s been punctured. Breath through it, it’ll calm you.” Reid didn’t wait for a response before he gently grasped the brawler’s bicep, so thick and wide his hand hardly curled around it, and laid his other atop the shoulder above his clavicle. “Alright, I’m going to move you now,” he warned. The brawler gave a quick short nod and shut his eyes, focusing on his breathing as instructed and tried to ignore the pull of muscle as Reid raised the arm straight out maddeningly slowly. When his wrist finally passed above his head, Wickens shuddered as he heard the reverberation of bone sliding on bone and the pain flare hot before dissolving into a dull ache with the pop of the ball sliding back into its socket. The nausea of all things is what threatened to overtake him. 

“Good man,” Reid praised, “sit tight, we need to get you to hospital.”

“It’ll have to wait,” Wickens sucked shallow breaths between clenched teeth. “You’ve gotta git goin’.”

“Reid!” McCullum bellowed testily and drew his attention away. “We need to find another way around,” he hollered from the ladder. Reid clapped Wickens on his good shoulder and stood to look up at where McCullum dangled and Parker’s panicked face was visible through the hatch.

“From what I recall of this stretch of tunnel, there isn’t any. I’ve never come down here with company before, the only way I know isn’t exactly accommodating of humans.”

“Fuck,” McCullum sighed, “is Wickens leech feed?”

Reid snorted. “He’ll live, but he can’t walk. He needs a hospital.”

“Then we need to find another way down. Schematics we gleaned said this ways ‘spose to be clear, with multiple emergency exits. Failed to mention a cliff, but it’s still our best bet.” Though he wasn’t holding out hope, McCullum dutifully continued his search of the room but found nothing of note before Reid cut off his thoughts. 

“Jump,” he called. McCullum frowned down at him sternly. This didn’t seem the place for jokes.

“Get bent, arsehole, and keep lookin’.”

“I’ll catch you.”

It took several blinks and several more seconds to realize the doctor’s face didn’t hold an ounce of jocularity from what he could see of it. “Are you mad? Like Hell I’m jumping, that’s a two story drop ya fuckin’ eejit.”

“I’m here, you won’t fall,” Reid replied outstretching his arms.

“I ain’t goin’ neither, Doc! No way no how!” Parker interjected poking his head down through the grate again.

“Then what would you propose we do?” the Ekon bit back, “by the time we find another way around your friend will have passed out from shock or worse and our window of opportunity will have closed. Need I remind you that time is of the essence?” From high above Reid looked like a stern father admonishing his tree-climbing children with his arms akimbo and his mouth a tight line to match the firm crease between his brows. McCullum glared right back.

“One broken leg is enough I’d say.”

Parker was babbling something in the background, but it was all white noise to Geoffrey who was too proud to wilt under Reid’s unbroken glare. A strong will went a long way, and he’d yet to meet one more tenacious than his own, but still Reid refused to waiver and still on Parker droned. Time may be of the essence, but so was maintaining his usefulness by keeping all his bones inside his body. Jonathan crossed his arms over his chest.

Geoffrey groaned. “Reid…”

No response, neither a shift in posture nor a decibel of speech, only the continuous, pressing glare that made McCullum swallow the lump in his throat. 

“I swear to the Almighty if you drop me-”

“-McCullum I’m not going to drop you.”

“What the ever-loving fuck,” Parker screeched, “with all due respect sir. You can NOT fuckin’ jump because if you jump I’ll have to jump and I’m not fuckin’ jumping.”

“Shut it,” he responded flatly without breaking the doctor’s gaze. “You’re sure ‘bout this?” he yelled down.

“I’ve yet to lie to you,” he said and held his arms back out. 

“Implying it’s only a matter of time before he does,” he grumbled up to Parker’s slack-jawed expression. Geoffrey huffed and slid himself down to the final rung of the jagged ladder, as close to the ground as it would allow while Jonathan watched him intently. 

“Fall back. Bridal-style,” he instructed. 

“Don’t fuckin’ call it that,” McCullum muttered under his breath knowing full well Reid could hear him. With a resounding chorus of fucks echoing throughout his head and one last Hail Mary, he let go of the bars and let gravity take the choice from him. 

Falling at all was a strange sensation. Falling from a great height was another. Falling backwards from a great height with the knowledge that your current view would be the last you ever saw should your greatest natural enemy fail to heed their word was a nightmare few would ever know. And for that, McCullum was grateful - he wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone. Everything that happened from the moment the cold steel drifted out of his reach permanently- too far now to grasp again -to the instant his body came to a definitive stop, whether it be in strong solid arms or against harsh unyielding pavement, was out of his control, and the glaringly obvious fact of the matter was more chilling than the frigid air that ripped at his coat and tore through his hair. 

And then suddenly the wind was gone, and although a much softer landing than the unforgiving concrete, the sudden decrease in velocity wretched at his stomach and slammed his eyes shut without his consent, so when he opened them again Reid peered down at him curiously, an arm hooked under his knees and the other looped beneath his broad shoulders. The expression he wore, McCullum thanked any and all the Gods, held no trace of a conceit, but instead was the fixed and ridged mask of a physician tasked with a patient. 

“Are you alright?” he asked the hunter in that smooth and unaffected baritone, to which McCullum nodded. He felt like a toddler with his arms bunched to his chest and his body cradled to another’s, and he was a far cry from appreciative regardless of circumstance. A growl built in his chest but Reid, perhaps either sensing McCullum’s mounting discomfort or simply knowing the man all too well, gently lowered the arm beneath his knees and let the hunter take to his own feet. A passing gaze between them was all the tension McCullum allowed before he turned to Wickens still stealing small, painful breaths from his place against the wall. 

It took some coaxing, to say the least, but Parker was eventually persuaded to take the plunge as well rather than be left behind in the Skal infested maze, and reunited they made to haul off their injured only to hit another wall in the form of the injured himself. 

“Leave it be, ya lightbrained rootwads, you’ve a job to do,” the brawler squirmed from McCullum’s grip when he tried to get a grip on him. 

“Ay, so the sooner we get you outta here the sooner we can come back to do it.” 

“Yer a daft cunt n’ you know it if ya think they’ll still be here by tomorrow. They’ve heard us by now, if you turn tail you’ll’ve lost ‘em.”

“An’ you’ve lost what’s left of your gin-soaked mind if you think we’re leaving you on your own,” Parker heaved with hands still on his knees, winded from the fall. “I didn’t cliff dive just to come back to your dead body.”

“He’s right, git, we’re not leaving you alone,” McCullum declared. 

“You ain’t got the choice, clock’s a-tickin’,” the brawler huffed. “I’m wounded, but I ain’t defenseless. I’m a big boy with a big gun. I’ll be fine, an’ even if I wasn’t, I know what I signed up for. This’s bigger than just one man. Go.”

McCullum wanted to glare, and so he did, but he understood as well. Were he in Wickens’s place, he’d have asked the same of him and he admired his soldier’s spirit, but it didn’t make the decision any less difficult. He growled and looked away, down the darkened tunnel that indicated their exit. “Parker,” he grumbled, “you’ll stay here with Wickens. Reid and I’ll take care of the horde.”

“What?” came the startled reply from both guardsmen. Reid looked unperturbed by the statement. Geoffrey supposed a single extra gunner or no wouldn’t make much of a difference compared to an Ekon’s arsenal. 

“I… suppose that’s right then,” Parker set his hands to his hips. “Can’t be helped.”

“You’ll want him though,” Wickens contended, “no better backup than a sniper.”

“Course I’d want him, I’d want you too, fuckin’ wight, but we don’t always get what we want now do we?” McCullum brushed him off. “Reid is the intended weapon of choice, so long as we get him to the lair the mission’s good as done,” and the finality he exuded left the others respectfully speechless. “Now then,” he continued to Parker, “stay here, we’ll be back in a half hour’s time, and if not, scout an exit and come back with a crew to get Wickens to a medic. Do not follow us, or you’ll lead ‘em right back to ya.” Parker nodded and slung his rifle from his shoulder to stand at attention. McCullum nodded back and with a look to Reid, the two headed off. McCullum led the way as they passed through the mouth of the tunnel at the far end of the room, following the river flow until they were swallowed by the darkness and disappeared from sight. 

“You’ve got this, yeah?”

“Of course, I’m confident this will be over quickly.”

“Famous last words.”

“It may be for the best it’s only you and I, fewer loose ends to keep track of.”

“Keep your eyes on the prize, doctor, I’m no slouch. I can handle myself.”

“I’m well aware.”

The pair walked in silence, the faint echo of McCullum’s boots drowned out by the now much gentler lapping of the water to their right, and the farther they walked the stronger the undeniable stench became. It was a scent with which they’d both become intimately acquainted, but it never failed to burn at McCullum’s nose and he wondered absently if Reid’s heightened senses made it all the worse for him. His grim face gave nothing away. 

As expected, the closer they drew to the heart of the sewer the more rogue skals they encountered roaming the empty tunnels, and they dispatched them without incident in the order that they appeared. There was no way of truly knowing if they still held the element of surprise in their hand or if the horde had been on alert since their first shots had fired, but it wasn’t a chance they had the luxury of relying on. So while neither tried to make noise in excess, McCullum had no reservations smoothly pulling his pistol from beneath his coat and burying a bullet between a blinker’s eyes. It staggered and collapsed at his feet, and McCullum sliced cleanly through its neck to severe the head - he’d been bitten in the arse by too many leeches to turn his back to one still twitching. It wasn’t until he stabbed a vindictive jab into its lifeless back that Reid raised a brow questioningly. 

“What?” he asked innocently. Reid chuckled but only shook his head and McCullum couldn’t help but smirk at his departing back. The smile lingered as he followed.

“We’re close,” Reid announced just when McCullum thought the stench couldn’t get much worse. He pulled up next to where the doctor paused in the middle of the corridor, focused, and waited. “Your men were right, thirty or so, perhaps more.”

“An army either way,” McCullum spat. “What do you need?”

Reid rolled his neck and shoulders, loosening what he could, and smiled at him, an odd and out of place gesture in the foul dampness that set their stage. “Room to work,” he said, “I can focus on the mass of them if I can trust you to deal with any fleeing strays.”

“Right, I’ll take care of it. If they’re still in the cistern where the scouts first found ‘em, I’ll have a good vantage point from the ledge to keep ‘em contained, run ‘em right back to you.”

“Good,” Reid agreed, “let’s go.”

Not much surprised Geoffrey anymore, not after this long in the game, but every nest always hit different no matter how many you’d seen before, and this one hit hard. The smell was the cloying, pungent odor of decay and singed hair, and the hunter had to hold his scarf across his face to stomach a deep breath. It appeared surprise had been on their side after all, and they remained undisturbed from their perch at the mouth of the opening to the expansive room. 

Although the cistern had long since been abandoned, a shallow collection of rancid maroon-colored water still coated the stone floor and was dotted with strewn about chunks of rot, no doubt having once belonged to the homeless and forgettables of Whitechapel that happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Great stone pillars rose from floor to ceiling in regular intervals like stalagmites eroded smooth and the ceiling bowed into arches where they melded. Shallow overlapping gashes had been carved out around each of the bases. The Skal were here all right, and clumps of them gathered randomly throughout the space while the seldom loner drifted unconsciously as though floating along an unseen current, thoughtless like bumbling bees. 

“Ready?” Geoffrey muttered through the fabric of his scarf. Reid was kneeled next to him and Geoffrey watched his eyes dart across the scene below, no doubt mapping the battlefield just as he was, and he nodded grimly. “At your mark then.” His bolts had been checked and rechecked, both pistol and revolver loaded, and Ol’ Faithful was sheathed at his hip. All that was left was for Reid to start the show. 

One of the things that had drawn McCullum’s eye to Reid in the first place was his own love for the dramatic, and although whether the doctor had an intrinsic flair for it or the theatrics just bloomed wherever he set foot was still up for debate, Geoffrey always appreciated a good show and Jonathan was most certainly a star. He leapt from the edge without a sound, crouched one moment and gone the next, and just as suddenly an explosion of black spikes erupted from the largest of the Skal packs with a shockwave of energy that was better felt than heard and it sent those at the outer edge of its radius shooting backwards into the murky waters. Reid stood at the center, looking crisp and calm and absurdly out of place atop the pulverized remains of his unlucky lesser cousins. Although perhaps they were the lucky ones after all McCullum mused as he watched Reid yank another back by the shoulder with such brute force that his claws ripped the arm off entirely. 

Pleasing as it would’ve been to sit back and watch Reid do all the work, McCullum spied more than one straggler that had pulled off from the group and tried to seek refuge in the dark. Pinned beneath his crosshairs, he put bolt after bolt in each and every one that so much as twitched in the direction of a tunnel while Reid ripped and tore through the clusters of putrid bodies as if he were wacking weeds. 

Powerful as the Ekon was, his mobility was limited while so tightly enclosed in the struggling mass clawing desperately closer to his tantalizing blood. When he wanted to dodge around one he found himself cut off by yet another and they threw themselves at him in endless waves, climbing over one another in their mindless dedication to destroy. He threw out one pool of shadow mist after another to give himself a moment’s respite from the horde but still they pursued him, tearing at his coat and sinking razor nails into his back and shoulder to pull him down, and as soon as he threw one loose from his back another would take its place. Blood pooled at his feet and turned the murky brown water a crimson scarlet as it ran freely down his body in intermittent streams, new wounds dug out of his flesh the moment old ones closed, and although his inhuman healing kept him alive, it did little to free him of the burden of pain. A gasp ripped loose from his throat when a particularly vicious bite tore into the side of his neck, deep and immediately gushing precious blood, and Reid hissed and flung the creature to the ground where he stomped its chest vindictively, stilling the beast instantly.

It was difficult to tell how many remained, perhaps only ten, perhaps as many as fifteen, but what was obvious was that Reid was waning after having already put down the other twenty. It didn’t take a doctor to know that he’d lost too much blood, and each time he sank his fangs into an isolated leech another took advantage of his back and lunged, either shattering his dwindling blood shield or ripping savagely into his skin and stealing back what little blood he’d managed to drain from its comrade. He was more grateful than words could say that he only had to worry about those directly in front of him, as every now and then he would catch a stray from the corner of his eye suddenly collapse into the water with a bolt stuck into the back of its head. 

The stress of battle was familiar to both of them, but one could argue that this was still more McCullum’s playground than Reid’s, having played the game for longer and trained himself harder, this was his element and he ruled it well. He noticed everything, each opponent below him was marked in his mind and accounted for, and when he saw the largest of the remaining Blinkers phase out for longer than he could track McCullum paused his assault to take stock. Reid was fighting hard, breathing heavily and drenched in whomever’s blood with another dozen Skal still to go, and though his confidence in the man’s abilities stood strong, McCullum blinked comically as the missing Blinker materialized from thin air ten feet above the doctor’s head and panic shot through his chest cold as ichor venom when the weight of it crashed down and buckled Reid’s knees out from under him. The horde was on him in an instant, lashing claws across his exposed back and screeching wildly, frenzied like sharks in the water. 

“Shit,” Geoffrey muttered under his breath and scanned the area. Most of the rogues had been dealt with, the only remaining individuals not a part of the pack were slowly bleeding out on their own, and he took a final shot at a crawling straggler before he vaulted over the ledge and slipped both handguns from their holsters. The mob didn’t even turn to him so intent on their prey as they were until McCullum opened fire with relentless fury, emptying both pistol and revolver into the leech mass and the three nearest his ire dropped like sacks of rocks. 

That got their attention well enough, and the five that couldn’t reach Reid themselves turned and shrieked madly as the hunter traded guns for sword, unsheathing it and slashing clean through a lunging leech, leaving it dead before it hit the ground. The remaining four spared no thought before following suit and leaping at McCullum with deadly speed, the man only narrowly avoiding a claw to the jugular and a bite to the ankle as he twirled and slashed in tandem. He raised his blade just in time to clash with the claws of one as it chomped on air an inch from his face, drool dripping from its rotten maw, and McCullum had to hold back a gag as he punched the beast square in the nose. It choked and recoiled, but before McCullum could put it down another leapt at him from the side, and he whirled to pierce it through the chest and finished it by ripping the blade back out through the side of its ribcage. 

“Reid!” he bellowed over the screeches as he blocked a bite with his sword only to take another to the thigh. A mighty heave shoved the blood drenched steel deeper into the monsters jaw and cut through to the other side, decapitating the beast with a final push to both ends of the blade before he stabbed the other clawing at his leg clean through the brain. He cursed as he kicked the corpse away to send it sprawling and turned his attention in time to see Reid on his back holding one at bay by the jaws with his bare claws. With a snarl he yanked the monster’s mandible with such savage force it ripped it straight from its socked, and when the creature reared and tore away it hung grotesquely from its face before Reid ended it with a clawed jab straight through the face. 

Only a handful remained, but every hunter knew the fight wasn’t finished until only one side was left standing. McCullum sidestepped and let one fly by in its mad dash for his throat in a wide arc that brought him close enough to the back of the one Reid had frozen in place, its blood flowing sluggishly through the open air, and he cut through its shoulder and severed its arm before he shoulder checked it to the ground. 

“Down!” Reid ordered as he met McCullum’s eyes and the hunter immediately buckled his knees and crouched low, avoiding the crimson spear that sailed over his head and skewered two Skal together on a single line. They thrashed and clawed wildly at their impaled chests with deafening shrieks that rang in McCullum’s ears before he silenced them permanently with a bolt to the head and a sword to the throat, the spear only dissolving into thick globular drips and into the water when the beasts had stilled. Suddenly, silence. 

The immediate quiet accentuated the inhuman volume at which the leeches had screeched, and the stillness in the air settled heavy, warring with the adrenaline still running rampant in the survivors’ veins. McCullum’s chest was heaving and his leg burned like Hell, and Jonathan looked as if he’d been on the losing end of a meat grinder with his coat in ribbons and his shirt filleted open like a spiraled ham. He was breathing just as heavily and the gash above his eye was bleeding passively, but the fact that he was drawing breath at all was a miracle in its own right, and McCullum’s feet moved of their own accord, driven by adrenaline and restless energy. 

Jonathan wiped the blood from his face with a filthy sleeve and opened his eyes to McCullum planted firmly in front of him and suddenly there were fists in his lapels and lips on his mouth and any hope he had of catching his breath evaporated like the shadows of his own claws. Jonathan melted, exhaustion battling furiously against his thrumming nerves, and McCullum’s warm mouth moving against his was enough to snap his psyche like a twig beneath the hunter’s heel. Geoffrey pulled back as quickly as he’d come just as Jonathan curled his hands into the back of his jacket, and it felt as though he was a toddler given a puppy just to watch it get taken away. McCullum looked at him, purposelessly, with no reason other than to observe the details of him and Jonathan was desperate to know what he saw there. 

“I’ll give you points for style,” the hunter murmured against his lips, and consequences be damned Reid snuck his arms up the man’s chest to cradle his face and kissed him back for all he was worth. But McCullum didn’t yield, and although his wrists locked at the small of Jonathan’s back and the doctor’s arms moved to drape over his shoulders, he refused to deepen the kiss. Reid’s senses were frantic, a haywire amalgamation of so many scents in the air and aches in his body all buried shallow beneath the warmth of Geoffrey against him that he wanted to scream. His chest crushed against the hunter’s while that familiar singleminded determination overwrote his thoughts, and cold blood seeped into the other’s shirt as he desperately grasped for any semblance of rationality left within himself. He wanted to clutch and devour and go absolutely feral, but that single, steady pressure of McCullum’s hands at his back grounded him in the moment and he forced himself to focus. The steady beat against his chest, the singular smell of McCullum’s sweat, the taste of it on his chapped lips; he concentrated on the hunter and the hunter alone, and his breath came easier as the overstimulation slowly faded to a dull background hum. 

When McCullum pulled away again it was deliberate and thoughtful, almost reluctant, and Jonathan wanted to chase him. He opened his eyes, a faint red tint to the edges that may or may not have only been a reflection of the surrounding carnage, and the dark blue that met him was unreadable. 

“Time to go,” was all McCullum gruffed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will edit later, just wanted to get this up and posted for now. 
> 
> I would've loved to have them heavily make-out in the abattoir that was their battleground, but alas there's no way McCullum would've let so much as a drop of leech blood touch his tongue. 
> 
> Maybe next time.


	5. Party Like It's Circa 1920

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is alive and in good health and that is something worth celebrating: Priwen Style

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Completely nonsensical self indulgence, but there's some hella angst coming up soon so we're partying while we can

Wickens clapped him on the shoulder heartily, his grin as wide as his impossible frame, and McCullum clashed their mugs together in cheers. 

“To us, eh?” Wickens toasted and McCullum grinned and looped his drinking arm through the brawler’s own to lock their elbows together, a double helix indicative of a night soon to be well spent. Wickens’s other arm gripped the handle of his crutch, a constant presence at his side since their ill-fated sewer excursion the week prior, but the man had been in good spirits since their ascension from the foul tunnels and the absolute madman had barely missed a beat in spite of a broken leg and several cracked ribs. It was a miracle he was breathing at all, let alone drinking like he was trying to drown a tapeworm.

“Ay, to Priwen,” McCullum agreed and with a nod the pair downed their cups arm in arm. From the sidelines Reid watched the celebration unfold but his sight never drifted far from his hunter. Prickly bastard that he was, he was downright genial when it came to celebrating another leech on the pyre, and soldiers flocked to him in droves to clink glasses and share spirited laughs. Warmth blossomed behind Reid’s breastbone when he saw Geoffrey as he should be; adored and appreciated, sharing drinks and contented smiles, and not a care in the world other than just how long they could make the liquor last. 

“Oy Doctor,” McCullum called out from the mass of swarming soldiers, “won’t you at least pretend to be drinkin’ with us?” Reid could feel the shift of eyes towards him, McCullum’s ever-commanding voice carrying throughout the busy room, and he shifted on his feet. “Loath as I am to admit it, we wouldn’t be celebrating without you,” the hunter added. A quiet murmur rippled through the crowd, but to Reid’s surprise it was one of agreement rather than contention or, as he always feared most, suspicion. He swept the room and though the usual trepidation was present all around, he felt a notable absence of outright hostility. Perhaps it was the steady flow of whiskey. 

He pushed off from the back wall and weaved through the parting crowd to where McCullum sat lounging on a barstool with elbows braced against the makeshift bar top that Priwen had jimmy-rigged from amassed barrels and scrap wood. Sky met ocean blue as their eyes locked, and McCullum rose to extend a hand to the doctor, a simple yet very public gesture of gratitude, which Reid accepted with a firm shake as he was fixed with a hard stare, hand still gasped tightly. 

“This city has one less threat to worry about, and not a single soul is absent from this room tonight to pay for it. I thank ya for that,” McCullum commended for all to hear. Jonathan subdued his smile enough to pass it off as a pleased acknowledgement, but the familiar warmth that surged from the man’s hand and into his own left him giddy and the contentment that burgeoned within his bones was anything but professional. Still, he restrained his expression to a pleasant grin and released Geoffrey’s hand. 

“All too happy to assist,” he assured, “it’s in my best interest to keep as many men out of the infirmary as possible, after all.”

“Well we’ll have to swap out your scalpel for a sword more often then. I say, for tonight,” he raised his mug high and looked out across the sea of familiar faces, “to the leech doctor. We should’ve tamed him months ago.” Whoops and hollers and the sloshing of ale filled the room, and McCullum’s infectious smirk lingered along with the froth of beer on his lip. 

“Ya really can’t touch a drop?” a young rookie asked the doctor wondrously. The night had progressed past the point of no return for most, and the young lad that gazed up at Reid with strikingly wide green eyes had a pronounced flush across his cheeks. 

Reid looked down at him with a cocked head but replied steadily. “No, unfortunately my body rejects anything that isn’t blood, even liquids.”

“Thas a shame, not bein’ able to get drunk. I ain’t sure what I’d do with meself.”

“Maybe he ought to take a sip a Sanders, fecker’s veins likely more alcohol than blood by now,” another jeered. 

“Wuz that? Fuckin’ sacrifice me to a leech like a cheap draft!” Sanders cried.

“For science, mate, for science! Be the noblest bloody thing you’ve ever done with yer life.”

Reid chuckled at the jest, but more so at the bizarre normalcy of it all. Here stood the men who’d been fighting tooth and nail to exterminate him since his first redundant breath — cheering and spilling their drinks alongside him as if each and every one of them hadn’t taken a shot at him at one point or another, and as if he couldn’t hear the woosh of thirst-slaking blood through every loosened artery in the room. To see that the side of Priwen that wasn’t bathed in gunpowder and flame was just like every other rowdy pub in London was as startling as it was relieving, but it left Jonathan with an odd sense of sonder. Each of these men that had once tried their damndest to stuff Reid full of lead also led a life outside the Guard as average humans with unique thoughts, ambitions, desires, perspectives, and it was a dizzying reminder that no coin was one sided. His gaze unerringly found McCullum like metal to a magnet but the leader was long since lost in the crowd again, having been sucked back into the swells of the party. Reid slipped easily from the throng and returned to the outskirts of the group where he staked out his place against the wall and allowed time to pass him by.

Let it be known that Geoffrey McCullum was two things if nothing else: One helluva determined son of a bitch, and a full blooded Irishman. Jonathan had never seen a man pack away so much drink and still stand under his own power, but Geoffrey’s speech was hardly slurring when three much less steady men forcibly set him down at the lone round table to one side of the room, and McCullum allowed it with only mild complaining. At the other end of the small table sat the largest brawler Jonathan had ever laid eyes on, with arms thick as tree branches and a neck so wide and stout it seemed not to exist at all, lost in the rest of the man’s sheer bulk, and he was grinning at Geoffrey with a feral glint in his eye. Admittedly intrigued, Jonathan floated closer to observe over another’s shoulder and noted the same glint was reflected back in McCullum’s own. It was obvious that each was certain they would be walking away a winner, though in what Jonathan still couldn’t be sure. 

Glasses filled with foaming ale were placed before each hunter but neither moved to reach for them and just as quickly as the first had appeared another suddenly stood beside it, followed by a third, until the small table was overcrowded both by topped off glasses and each challengers’ bulk.

“You know the rules gentlemen,” Wickens hobbled to the edge of the table to stand between the two, “first done, first place. No pissin’ no pukin’, ya hit the floor yer out the door. Ready?” The first cup was dwarfed clutched in the brawler’s massive palms and looked more like a shot glass than a full draft, and the man had eyes solely for McCullum with that wild smirk still etched across his face, but the commander refused to yield and held his gaze steady as he wrapped fingers round his own sweating glass. “On yer mark, get set, shoot!” 

McCullum slammed back the first cup as if he were pouring it down a sink, but the brawler matched him and smacked his empty cup down on the tabletop just as McCullum gulped his last mouthful. The second slid down quicker than the first, and the crowd on every side of the table roared furiously, cheering and jeering as raucously as if they’d bet the house on the ponies. For all Jonathan knew, maybe they had, and it was with a medical fascination he marveled as McCullum polished off his final draft with a slam of glass on wood, only to meet the brawler’s hazy, gloating eyes already looking at him, three empty glasses lining his side of the table.

“Fuck me runnin’… I’ll be damned,” McCullum spat over the bellows of their audience. Fingers drummed on the tabletop as he stared the other down with narrow eyes and a tightlipped frown, and the brawler sat just as wary for a reaction until eventually McCullum slapped his palms to the table and stood with an air of finality. The brawler wobbled as he followed but with a bracing grip to the back of his chair he shook McCullum’s outstretched hand with the other. “Credit where credit’s due,” the leader clapped him on the arm. 

“S’ good round,” the other slurred and McCullum snickered. 

“Ay, ya solid mate? Drinkin’ fast don’t count for much if you can’t hold it,” he mocked. “Otherwise, only thing you’ve shown me is how well you can take it down the gullet.” The resounding hollers nursed his damaged pride as did the sneer it brought to the brawler’s face.

“Fuck if’m not solid,” he argued, “‘m stone cold.” He smacked the back of the chair he’d been leaning on hard enough to send it toppling to the floor and stood to his full towering height. “Stone cold,” he repeated, perhaps for his own sake, and turned to take his leave. The crowd continued their praises and jeers and clapped both men across the back in approval, and it wasn’t until the brawler reached the bar that he reached out to lean against the counter only for his searching grasp to miss the edge by a mile and clutch at empty air. When his face met the floor the silence in the room was shocking and immediate - nobody twitched. The man with his face smashed against the wood groaned lightly, the only sound in the frozen space, until McCullum’s deep bark split the air, his laughter unhinged and unrestrained and suddenly the room erupted in noise again, laughter and shouts so cacophonous that they could’ve woken the dead. Jonathan ghosted through the stream of bodies to where men were attempting to righten the man with little success, but with the help of a vampire’s strength they propped him in a chair meant for someone a third of his size. Reid set about an examination, found nothing of note and, suffering a mild slap to the hand when he tried to assess the hulk’s pupils, left him to slouch in his chair. 

McCullum was at his side as if he’d materialized from smoke and he jabbed him in the arm with an elbow, contest and loss already forgotten. “Tell me, Reid, did you have a personality before the bloodsuckers got their fangs in ya? Or’ve you always hated a laugh?” The slur in McCullum’s voice hadn’t improved, and his accent was more prominent than Jonathan had ever heard it, but the gleam in his eye was as strong as the alcohol on his breath. 

Reid rubbed his surely bruised arm soothingly and pointedly ignored the thrumming of McCullum’s pulse jackhammering beneath his skin like a hammer pounding across the fragile tile of Jonathan’s composure. He smiled tightly at him instead. “I can assure you the only thing that’s changed is my diet.” McCullum’s eyes slid shut like they were weighed down by rocks and he smiled unlike himself. 

“Mm,” he hummed and slung an arm around Reid’s shoulders, “and here I was thinkin’ maybe you’d been a man-eater all along.”

Jonathan’s lip twitched despite himself and he tightened his grip on his own arms before they decided to wander too far. Geoffrey leaned on him, not fully, but enough Jonathan could feel his heat and needed to shift to support the weight. He appreciated the contact, craved Geoffrey’s warmth in any shape he could get it, but he was cautious in the face of the other’s lack of reservation in the crowded room as if his overly familiar touch could possibly go unnoticed. But even with enough alcohol in his veins to put down a raging bull Jonathan still trusted McCullum to know his men and read a room, and if the leader believed a casual arm across his shoulders was innocent enough then far be it from him to dissuade the man. 

He wished there could be more moments like this, ones where the shields could fall away a little, however briefly, and comfort could take their place. The soft, easygoing lull of unity with another, surrounded by friends and laughter and love. It wasn’t a setting he felt he belonged in anymore but it was one he longed for more now than ever, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d been a fool for declining every opportunity all those years ago, before the choice was taken from him. 

But it never did to dwell, and here in the present all Reid could find within himself to want was McCullum held firm against his side, and with a deliberate nonchalance he dropped and looped his arm around to settle his hand on the other’s shoulder in a copied gesture of the hunter’s own, like serpents entwined. McCullum’s expression didn’t falter, that dazed half smile never slipping from his face, and he kept his arm around Reid even as Parker approached them, and so Reid kept his in turn. 

“You sure know how to put on a show there, McCullum,” Parker quipped and Geoffrey laughed and Jonathan wished he could bottle the sound. 

“Boy’s a beast I’ll give ‘em that, but fat lotta good it did ‘em. Lucky he’s still got his front teeth.” 

“Quite,” the doctor agreed. 

“Ha, fucker ain’t used to puttin’ his money where his mouth is, I bet you were the first to give him a real run for it in years.”

“Fair’s fair, he took that round,” Geoffrey admitted and leaned more heavily on the doctor. 

“Not standin’ up he didn’t,” Parker laughed at his own wit. 

Geoffrey leaned in close to speak low over the dull roar of the room and as he bent he pulled Reid down with him until all three gathered with heads together as if in secret conference. “I’d eat my cross ‘fore I let an Englishman drink me under the table,” McCullum rumbled the fact like a threat. The interaction was a subtle example of another quality Reid could add to the growing list of things he admired about the hunter; McCullum could make people bend to him, but more often than not, they bent themselves. People listened to him, hung on his words, and bestowed upon him an authority without the man himself having to ask for it, it was always already assumed to have been given, and was given freely. Parker held his eyes because he respected that authority, and he leaned in unbidden because he knew the words to have weight. “The day the drink o’er takes me is the day they dress me to see the Good Lord,” he drawled in a tongue thick with accent and Reid bit his lower lip to keep from smiling too fondly. 

Parker’s attention had been snatched away by the sound of scuffling from the bar and he peered around the pair to call out. “Daft bastard! Yer wastin’ it!” The sniper had rounded McCullum’s right and was gone in a moment to put an end to the endless stream of booze that was pouring from a cask and onto the drenched bar top as several poor sods tried to stanch the flow before it could drip to the floor. Geoffrey craned his neck to watch him go and hummed half a laugh as his eyes drifted lightly closed again. 

“Perhaps it’s time for you to retire as well,” Reid encouraged.

The hunter’s smile widened, uninhibited and bright as the doctor had ever seen it, and he ran his free hand through his hair and looked out at Reid through the tangled mess of it left to flop in front of his eyes. “Tryin’ to lie me down already?” Curling the arm around Reid’s shoulder to hunch him forward and bend his ear, he murmured much more collected than a man of his inebriation ought to’ve been able, “’s that an invitation?”

“Okay,” Jonathan decided resolutely with a pat to the other’s shoulder as he straightened them both, “I think you’ve had quite enough. Let’s put you to bed.”

“Mhmhm,” McCullum chuckled, “yea, you’d like that wouldn’t ya.” Jonathan groaned exasperatedly, though not at all in the way McCullum preferred him to, and the commander snickered to himself. “I’m jus’ flippin’ ya shite, biter,” he assuaged and with a heavy sigh lamented, “guess it is gettin’ to be that time.”

“You’re going to get us both skinned alive,” Reid rejoined under his breath as he tugged him in the direction of the stairs. 

“Oy, McCullum, you done for the night?” Parker called from the bar. Reid noticed the young gunner had their keg problem solved so long as someone could drink the glass he had under the stream as quickly as he needed a new one. McCullum shut down Reid’s train of thought regarding the man’s dwindling intelligence before it could matter. 

“Ay, I’m trustin’ you to keep this lot in order, eh? Sun’s up, I’m callin’ it.”

“I’ll keep ‘em in line, sir,” he saluted mockingly and the quirky smile he wore did not go unnoticed. “The doc going with you I take it?”

The grip on Reid’s shoulder neither faltered nor tightened, but the doctor caught the way McCullum’s veins constricted. “Watch yerself, brat,” he warned benignly, “he keeps blatherin’ ‘bout ‘alcohol poisonin’’ this ’n “kidney function’ tha’. Think he jus’ never seen a guardsman drink before,” he shouted easily over the table talk and Jonathan swallowed his surprise at his quick thinking. Perhaps the man was more in control of his faculties than he’d first assumed. “If y’need me, don’t need me,” he bumbled, “I’ll be in my office.”

“My office,” Reid corrected as smug as he was matter-of-fact. 

“Our office,” he reluctantly met him halfway and regretted it as soon as the words left his rum soaked tongue. Reid smiled tightlipped to the gunner and the room at large as he dragged McCullum away by the waist as smoothly as possible and as quickly as he dared and the hunter stumbled along agreeably.

“Honestly,” Reid grumbled once they were secluded within the empty hallway, “it’s as though you want them all to make assumptions.”

“I agreed if I lost the fight y’could take the office, but I never said I would leave it.”

“We’re not talking about the office.”

“Yer not, I am, ’s a nice office…” he ran a hand along the door frame of the room in question as they stumbled across the threshold.

Unconvinced, Reid huffed and pulled Geoffrey’s arm more securely across his shoulder. “You’re lucky everyone here is so far into their cups,” he admonished as he hauled the mercenary to the bed behind the partition that separated bedroom from office space.

McCullum was right about one thing; it was a very nice office. The sturdy desk before the large window just opposite the door was a fine dark wood that accented the trim around the door and window frame, and the space was large enough to house the desk and several bookcases lining the wall without intruding into the area that had been sectioned off with a thin reed divider. Jonathan wouldn’t have thought Geoffrey was one to care much for interior decorating and it stood to reason most of the things that lingered here were once the property of Miss Fletcher. The only touches of Geoffrey in the room were the many books that bowed the shelves, the sword that rested in its sheath on the windowsill, and the great unmade bed tucked into the corner. 

“Don’t be so dramatic,” the hunter grumbled and tried to retract his arm but Reid gripped it tighter than strictly necessary. Geoffrey yanked and twisted stubbornly.

“Getting cozy with a vampire in any capacity is bound to draw suspicion,” he warned as Geoffrey sank to the mattress and reclaimed his arm. 

The hunter sighed, the night catching up to him suddenly and all at once, and he immediately felt as tired as he always looked. “Y’ think I don’t know that? The boys bullshit, poke fun, wrestle… If yer one a the boys now, I’ll rough y’up jus the same,” he defended sluggishly. “Make no mistake, Reid, I know the game.”

Jonathan wanted to smile, both out of fondness and the desire to reassure, but the gravity of it all pressed his expression flat again. “I suppose if anyone knows where a group of vampire hunters would draw the line it would be you.”

McCullum grinned and folded his hands over his chest as he lay back on the bed with his boots still to the floorboards. “Tha’s right. I know the boys, and it pains me to say they’ve taken a likin’ to ya.”

“Should that not be a good thing?” the doctor argued and sat beside him.

“Means either I’ve been too soft on ‘em or they’re losing their edge.”

“These times are sorrowful and harsh, it’s good to keep in mind you’re only human. I think we could all stand to soften some.” McCullum’s head fell to the side as he eyed Reid with a predatory smirk and Reid had to close his eyes and grit his teeth when he realized too late just how childish they both were. 

“Mmm, so long as you don’t soften on me,” Geoffrey slapped the back of his hand on Reid’s thigh for emphasis, and the doctor held his head in his hands when the hunter chuckled to himself. 

“Incredible,” he muttered, “truly astounding.”

Geoffrey only grinned up to the ceiling and sighed again looking as content as a cat caught in a sunbeam as his eyes slid closed. “Get the fuck outta my room,” he mumbled softly through the smile. 

Jonathan huffed a laugh in mock offense. “This is my room,” he reminded him. 

“Our room,” the other responded with still closed eyes. 

Geoffrey was a creature like no other, Reid was sure of that, but it could be as frustrating as it was rewarding to try to follow where his affections trailed on any given night. It was maddening, as if he was starting each night over from scratch no matter how intimate things had felt the night before, as though Reid was always a step behind and picking up the scraps of Geoffrey’s attention wherever he deigned to drop them. Although he’d since resigned himself to accept that the attention he received would only ever be of the physical variety, it was never easy to gauge just how tender a moment the hunter would allow. He could count on one hand the number of times McCullum had allowed himself to be held or kissed or comforted that hadn’t been preceded or followed immediately by more, and the act itself was a primal thing, never slipping past the basic need for that familiar heat. It would’ve been nice, Jonathan thought to himself, to lie down beside him and revel in the comfort of “their” room, in “their” bed, but he knew that would never be his place. 

“Sleep, and try to drink something when you wake,” the doctor spoke softly and allowed himself the small act of brushing the loose hair from the hunter’s eyes before he stood. “Goodnight Geoffrey.” McCullum made a humming noise but didn’t stir, and it was only when the doctor turned to go that he heard his goodbye. 

“G’night John,” he sighed heavily as he rolled his back to the doctor, who had stopped cold and turned to look at him as if he’d spoken a curse. He watched the gentle rise and fall of Geoffrey’s side with every even breath — unaware or uncaring of the shock he’d administered to Jonathan’s lungs — and it was several long moments before he found it within himself to leave the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look me in the eye and tell me Priwen doesn't tell dick jokes


	6. Enemies with Benefits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had the intrusive vision of McCullum getting bent over his desk and I WILL make that everyone else's problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know why you're here

“Quiet, someone’s coming,” Reid breathed heavily against the shell of McCullum’s ear as he clamped a gentle hand over the hunter’s panting mouth. Geoffrey grunted a noise somewhere between indignant and exasperated but breathed laboriously through his nose in measured huffs. The edge of his sturdy office desk bit painfully into the front of his thighs and the faint tips of Reid’s developing claws were sunk deep enough just above the crook of his hip that blood was starting to well, but with eyes squeezed shut and a will steelier than the cock buried to the hilt inside of him he steadied his gasps. The belt buckle still looped through McCullum’s hastily unbuttoned pants – pushed down to wrap snugly round his thighs – jangled faintly as it clanged against the desk each time his hips were rammed forward. McCullum may not have ears as keen as Reid’s, but the footfalls drawing nearer were unmistakable now and Geoffrey could feel the sheer reluctance in the waning of the doctor’s thrusts. 

It was a vain hope that the intruder would pass them by what with McCullum’s — or rather, _their_ office — being at the dead end of the hall, but his heart sank a little further still when the three sharp raps sounded through the thick wooden door. As much as he resented the doctor’s assertive hand over his mouth he was grateful Reid had picked up on the interloper when he had -- the noises he’d been making only seconds ago would be hard to explain to any worldly adult. McCullum’s grip on the desk edge tightened at the knock and Reid’s hand slipped from his lips to trail down and settle snugly around his throat. The doctor’s chest weighed heavily on his back and his chin hooked over the bruised and mottled crook of Geoffrey’s shoulder where his hastily unbuttoned shirt had been pulled away. 

“Say something,” Reid whispered. McCullum shivered and the movement pulled a breathless sound from the doctor who dropped his hands to curl arms around the hunter’s waist. Three more knocks sounded from the door before McCullum took a deep breath in and out. 

“What?” he called back calmly, unwilling to stutter. 

“Courier’s here with the month’s cases,” a familiar voice answered, “need to know where you’re delegating ‘em to.” McCullum’s heavy sigh had little to do with the hand snaking its way up his half buttoned shirt, but it wasn’t helping either. 

“Fuck’s sake, Sanders, figure it out,” he shot back a bit harshly. 

The man on the other side of the door was used to the fire and unperturbed, only responding with a cool, “It’d be nice to know where the lorry oughta drop ‘em off at so we don’t have to haul crates more’n once.” 

McCullum would’ve liked to address the man fully and give the situation, mundane as it was, proper attention, but the doctor at his back had chosen a very inopportune time to nip the lobe of the commander’s ear. He hissed low and threw back an elbow that caught Reid high in the ribs and earned him a satisfying grunt. What he could’ve done without was the roll of the doctor’s hips he was also awarded. With a bitten off groan he let his head fall back to rest on the doctor’s shoulder and was immediately swarmed with bruising kisses and soft nips to the side of his throat. 

“You listening in there, McCullum?” Sanders vied for his attention, “you alright?”

“Fine,” Geoffrey managed between kisses as he tangled fingers in Reid’s soft hair, “just send the majority with Wallace and give the .303s to Jones.” His heart missed another beat when Reid pulled back and the slick drag of his cock against McCullum’s walls was the only sense he could register, and as the doctor rolled his hips and slid back into him in one decadently fluid wave it tore the memory of breath itself from his mind. Another steadying inhale and he dismissed the man with a final, “Sort the rest yourself.” Reid was the only one who picked up the underwhelmed huff through the door, but both could hear the boots on floorboards until the echoes faded from the hall, the set of Reid’s unwavering hips gaining momentum with every departing step. McCullum kept his eyes and teeth firmly clenched.

Satisfied they were out of earshot, McCullum threw another elbow and connected solidly with Reid’s gut, effectively breaking his cadence when he stopped entirely with a muffled curse. “You’re a right bastard, fuckin’ tool,” Geoffrey hissed with venom on his tongue. 

“Mm,” Reid hummed as he slid back inside. Geoffrey huffed again but didn’t stop him. 

“Couldn’t be bothered to pull out for two bloody seconds—” McCullum rolled his head to the side and away from Reid’s insistent tongue to lean forward and rest his forearms on the cluttered desktop “—fucking sadistic, Skal-brained, sharp-toothed…” The insults spilled across his tongue like sweet syrup that thickened and dried the longer Reid kept up his languid rhythm until they dispelled completely and he lapsed instead into idle murmurs and wordless sighs. 

Reid stroked his palm across McCullum’s flank softly, slow and sedated, and his deep thrusts matched his calm and gentle pace. Their tempo settled to one unhurried and divine, for the sake of the journey rather than the destination, and every leisurely stroke felt weighted and significant. When McCullum could be coerced into these lazier rounds he could feel every oil slicked glide inside of him with astounding clarity, and he felt as though he could carve the shape of Reid from marble by the feel of him alone. 

It was a strange thing for Geoffrey to hear the sounds the doctor drew from the hunter’s own lips, but they’d been at this game for far too long now for him to feel any sense of ignominy over the quiet hums and pants he’d given up withholding. Admittedly, Jonathan growling into the meat of his shoulder also helped to preserve his pride, an indisputable manifestation of the doctor’s own fervor.

“Ooh...” Geoffrey moaned quietly while Reid traced the curves of his back up to grip his shoulders, “fuck, yes, just like that…” he huffed as he ground himself back against the doctor’s thrusts. Reid groaned at McCullum’s pointed hip swivel crushing against his groin and buried his face in the crook of his neck and wrapped arms around his chest when suddenly he stiffened again, his unnatural stillness an unsettling reminder. 

“What?” McCullum craned his neck. 

“Someone else,” he determined. 

“What?”

Reid didn’t repeat himself, but peeled away from the other’s back to grasp his shoulders once more as he resumed his lazy undulations, pulling the man back onto him with each firm roll. McCullum could almost forget he’d said anything at all if it weren’t for the footsteps once again sounding down the hall moments later and the resounding pounding on the door for the second time that evening.

“Fuck’s sake,” he ground out under his breath. “Not now” he hollered at the door. 

“Sanders knows cock all ‘bout delegating, sir, if we have to wait another—”

“What part of ‘fuck off’s not getting through to you lot?” McCullum cut the voice off in spite of Reid’s demanding lips against his neck. “ _Handle it,_ ” he bit through gritted teeth.

“Y’alright in there, chief? Youse sick?”

“M’fine, Powels, and if I have to tell you to get lost one more fucking time I’ll burst a fucking vessel,” he seethed to the answer of fading curses and the sense that the man had gone. Reid gave no indication he’d been there at all with the way he was steadily hammering himself to the hilt without a stutter. McCullum let his forehead drop to the desktop with a soft yet solid thunk, suddenly so very tired in juxtaposition to the high edge he rode. 

“You’re begging for an arse beating,” he puffed and misted the glassy dark tabletop white with warm breath.

“Oh?” the doctor panted and ran his palms down the back of the thin button up that stuck to the hunter’s damp skin like ocean waves in stasis. “And am I to assume you would be the one to deliver?” 

“I’m not playing this fucking game with you tonight.” Geoffrey’s cheek was pressed to the dark wood of the desk, blissfully cool against his flushed face, and his hair was starting to mat to his dampened forehead. A shake of the head did little to toss the hair from his eyes, but when Reid combed pale fingers through the tangle of locks to reveal his face the hunter only scowled at him, the irritation in his eyes a laughable veneer that failed to conceal his satisfaction.

Reid kept their rhythm steady, and for once McCullum was content to let the pace plateau back into one as consistent and lethargic as a clock’s pendulum. Rare as it was for the hunter to allow the heat to smolder without deliberately fanning the flame, it was rarer still for him to let Jonathan have all the say, and so while the Ekon may have controlled the speed, McCullum pushed back into him to demand the depth.

Like a metronome with the grace and control bestowed only to the supernatural, Reid was spurred on by the gentle rocking of McCullum’s hips against his own. Time around them seemed to slide as the minutes melted by like Dali clocks, drifting senselessly as if maneuvering a darkened hallway with no guiding hand to the wall. 

Geoffrey gradually ground against him harder and Reid snapped his hips quicker until that ever present ember threatened to spark their bed of kindling and Jonathan had to force himself to slow. 

“Geoffrey,” he growled, “let me… please, I want to come inside you…”

Geoffrey could’ve choked. He could’ve whined, or spluttered, or moaned had he not snatched his breath back from the open air as the sudden slam of his heart against his ribcage nearly forced the noise from his throat. Instead he found his eyes closed again, shut tight against the constant bulge of Reid’s cockhead pressing against his walls with every rough slide, and ground his forehead harder into the desktop as if he could push the thoughts from his skull.

The first time McCullum was able to recall in extensive detail how his heart had sunk along with his pride as a subtle horror dropped on him like a curtain on a stage that crushed the air from his lungs, and Reid had had to apologetically assure him multiple times that it was blood and only blood that carried the vampiric curse. This was not new. Reid’s semen was something with which McCullum was loath to admit he was intimately acquainted and his spilling inside the hunter was far from a foreign concept, but until now it had been an unspoken one. One where Geoffrey had the benefit of deniability. In all their unvoiced sessions prior, whenever Reid had taken the initiative to empty his release inside, it had been implied and unrehearsed and Geoffrey had never argued for or against. Now it was a malevolent question swathed in a deceptively soothing baritone hanging in the open air between them. And it demanded an answer. Geoffrey did not plan on giving one. 

McCullum kept his eyes closed instead, curling his fingers against the woodgrain and grinding back against Reid’s rutting, shivering against the arms that had snaked their way around his middle. Turning his face to the side and his cheek to the wood all he wanted was to stroke his aching prick until the rabid heat in his gut melted him completely, but with Reid at his back and the desk at his front the angle made his awkward tugs at his cock nothing more than aggravating friction that did nothing to pull his edge within reach. Frustrated and denied, he clawed both hands against the wood and met Reid’s eye over his shoulder with a broiling glare. 

“You wanna come inside, leech?” he growled. Reid only groaned and tightened his grip round McCullum’s waist before he dropped his forehead between the hunter’s shoulder blades. His long, fine hair tickled the back of Geoffrey’s neck and waves of goosebumps erupted down his arms beneath his shirt — now dampened with sweat and clinging to his glistening skin. Geoffrey could feel him nod against his back through the rumpled fabric. “Then look at me —” Reid slowly hooked his chin over McCullum’s shoulder to meet his gaze with pained hesitance “—and finish me first,” the hunter punctuated with a jarring shove that knocked the wind from the doctor’s chest. 

Reid ghosted breath across McCullum’s cheek and shuddered bodily, and McCullum could feel the tremors as if they were his own before his mouth was caught in the onslaught of the doctor’s attention and his thoughts slipped away from him again like smoke in rain. 

McCullum was not a wordsmith, he had no need for fanciful descriptions or thoughtfully spun prose, and words continued to fail him now as the fervor with which Reid was artfully rearranging his insides promised to break him open. Their tempo, once delightfully decadent and lethargic, had burgeoned to a barely collected semblance of rhythm that had Jonathan’s nails biting as painfully into McCullum’s sides as the desk edge bit into his thighs. While he would’ve preferred to readjust -- widen his stance and relieve the pressure on his aching muscles -- his trousers restricting the spread of his legs and the bulk of Reid weighing on his back had him pleasurably pinned. The idea that he likely couldn’t have moved even if he’d truly wanted to burned him just as thoroughly as the grind of Jonathan’s cock against his inner nerves, and he wondered not for the first time if it was only pure sensation that sparked his own reactions, or if it was more the fact that the stimulation stemmed from Reid. 

McCullum had no time between each assault to collect himself, and each crushing blow to his prostate was stacked upon the last and drove him deeper into the madness of his dwindling coherency. All thought was driven from his mind and all breath plowed from his lungs as Reid clutched at him in mindless desperation as if he could hold on to his resolve if he could just hang on tight enough to the hunter’s body. McCullum rolled his hips to rock back against him as he was efficiently brutalized, though his timing fell more and more out of sync with the Ekon’s increasing speed until it was all he could do to lie there subjected and quivering as Jonathan murmured his name as though it would save him. 

It was merciless, one would almost call it cruel had they not heard the sounds pulled from the hunter’s lips before he choked them back with a knuckle seized in his teeth. It worked, for a time, to keep the whines at bay until Reid slackened his grip around his waist to yank back on his hips and release him from his prison against the desk front. McCullum slipped easily on the glossy wood and jolted like he’d touched a live wire when Reid gripped his pearling prick, now open and accessible, just another loose thread Reid could use to unravel him – and Geoffrey wished feverishly that he would tear him apart completely already. 

“Christ, Reid– Fuck!” he cussed at the gentle hand on his cock, the rhythm of Reid’s caress in time with his thrusts but with a pressure so much softer, featherlight and teasing and absolutely maddening. It was a mirror image of his release — the ghost of a feeling, almost enough but not quite real, looming and imminent but intangible. He groaned, low and loud and uncaring when Reid grasped him tighter and stroked him in earnest, and he gasped a shaky breath when his lungs burned from withholding it unconsciously. Reid’s palm was rough, hands unfitting of an aristocrat but characteristic of a soldier, and the grit of his grip had McCullum’s lips parted in harsh pants interspersed with breathless moans, while the doctor in his stupor whispered sweet praises and faint curses unnatural to his proper tongue. Eventually Jonathan lapsed into repetition of Geoffrey’s name alone, like the honor to say it aloud was a blessing bestowed to him personally, and perhaps in a way it was. 

The hot breath against the side of his neck, the grasp on his cock, the nails in his flank, the forced rippling of his walls as Jonathan plundered him — all of it coalesced with a sudden and jarring force that bowled McCullum over in one immediate and slamming wave that towered above him and blocked his vision with sparkling white before it was crashing down around him like a lava flow. A burning moment of rapture McCullum would’ve been pleased to drown in if it would’ve let him stay under that searing wave forever. Instead, when he surfaced again and his vision cleared and the noise of his own labored breathing reached his ears, he could feel the muscles in his thighs trembling like a scrawny lapdog as ripples of aftershocks rocked his core and sent shudder after shudder from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. Reid’s hand on his prick had slowed but not left and the insistent pumping of Reid’s cock in his ass had also lulled but not stopped. 

McCullum was too boneless against the desktop to sense the restraint the doctor was wielding to reign in his thrusts from frantic and forceful to some semblance of measured as McCullum rode out the waves of warm pleasure that continued to roll through him. But even with the will of a champion, Jonathan’s hands wanted to shake as violently as McCullum’s thighs.

“Fuck…” Geoffrey panted and swallowed down the dryness in his throat. His gaze was a thousand yards away and the glassy look in his hooded eyes betrayed his suggestibility. He groaned softly when Jonathan groped the meat of his ass and pulled himself gently from the hunter’s body. It was odd, he thought in a dimly lit section of his mind, that Jonathan would pull out now of all times. He had thought the whole point had been the dead opposite, and his confusion swelled when Jonathan dropped to a knee and busied himself with the ties of McCullum’s boots. 

“Reid?” he wondered aloud, voice hoarse and scratchy, “the hell are you doing?” Jonathan ignored the question and tapped wordlessly on the toe of the boot until McCullum obliged and lifted his foot to allow it to be removed and tossed aside, followed shortly by the other and then by his pants. The beltbuckle clanged loudly on the hardwood as they skittered to the corner, forgotten. Reid was on his feet again in a moment and McCullum pushed himself to his elbows and onto shaky feet as he looked over his shoulder at the doctor’s hungry eyes and heaving chest. He turned around fully to trail his eyes across the doctor’s body, from the prominence of his collarbones, down the expanse of his chest and stomach exposed beneath his open shirt, coming to rest on his flushed cock still hard as iron that made McCullum nearly ache with sympathy. 

Were it not for a hand on the desk behind him Geoffrey would’ve been knocked to the floor with how urgently Reid swelled to kiss him again, and the doctor had to steady his wobbly partner with a firm hand to the small of his sweat slicked back. Reid walked forward, insistently pressing McCullum back until his thighs met the desk’s edge, and even still he urged the hunter on. He grasped McCullum’s legs, just under the swell of his ass and hoisted until the man was sitting properly, bare skin to the hardwood and lips never parting. Reid’s right hand – and now the desk and back of the hunter’s left leg – was still damp with McCullum’s own release, but McCullum was the picture of pliancy, sucking lazily on the doctor’s bottom lip that drew a whine from between the Ekon’s teeth. Teeth that ached. 

Reid would have given much, perhaps anything, to sink fangs into McCullum’s kiss-plumped lip, just for a taste, just for the satisfaction. His throat ached with the familiar burn and his teeth throbbed as if they had a pulse, and his poor heat addled brain was hard pressed to pick an urge to feed. In the end of course, there was no decision to be made, only an impulse to be wrestled with, so when Reid pushed Geoffrey down on the desk with a hand to his chest, he took a moment to indulge in the view. 

Geoffrey looked thoroughly wrecked. His shirt was still in one piece, an improvement since their last impromptu tryst, but it was so badly askew the entirety of McCullum’s left shoulder had slipped through the unbuttoned collar and the third button had popped off entirely, lost now somewhere in the expanse of their room – a memento to be sheepishly reclaimed at a later date. Where the shirt parted just above the navel revealed the bruises above his hips that seemed to shine iridescent in the lamplight. The side of his neck looked like a painter’s palette and his hair was snarled and draped in front of half lidded eyes, sparkling and alight despite their fatigue as they drank the Ekon in curiously. 

Leaning back on his elbows to accommodate the encroaching vampire, McCullum had to lean up and crane his neck to reach the doctor’s lips again, though Reid was more than willing to cater to him. Stolen warmth seeped from the doctor’s hands as they caressed the back of his legs, a soothing presence running through the fine hairs, and he guided the hunter to lay back further until his shoulders touched wood and his legs splayed wide enough to welcome the doctor’s hips. McCullum’s breath was still coming back to him even as Reid kept stealing it away, but the softness of his mouth and the scratch of his beard served to distract the hunter until the blunt head of Reid’s cock once again came to rest against his tired hole. He was sated and limp and had no intentions of putting up any sort of fight, but the drag of Reid’s cock as he pushed back in to the hilt was much less comfortable now than it had been moments ago when his high had hit him full force. 

There was no need for preamble, McCullum was slick and relaxed and accepted the intrusion easily as Reid picked up right where he’d left off and that first smooth, albeit perhaps a bit forceful slide punched a breathless grunt from the hunter as he thumped the back of his head to the desk. He breathed deeply, the wet slide of Reid rapidly working in and out of him was much more apparent in fine detail now that his heart rate was plateauing and his mind had cleared of that lustful fog. It was a conflicting feeling; the stimulation one of pleasure but nearing the edge of too much, and the gnawing and depraved craving for Reid to fuck him absolutely raw until his legs gave out. He had a nagging feeling he would already have his work cut out for him when he had to take the stairs tomorrow. 

McCullum focused his breaths, only gasping or groaning when Reid needed to jostle him to plunge deeper and harder until the ache in his cramping muscles throbbed and he had to grit his teeth. Jonathan pulled Geoffrey’s leg higher, who grimaced at the new abusive angle and grunted a quiet, “Reid…” He was sore, and tired, and still Jonathan was determined to take him apart down to the bone. 

Reid panted, open mouthed and voiceless save for soft moans gentle as cool summer winds, chasing that final spark that would allow the kindling of his crest to catch. The hunter knew it was coming, it had happened before, but there was still the niggling in his hindbrain that harassed him endlessly that he had asked for it this time around. He had given himself to the perverse and sickly act of being thoroughly claimed, inside and out, by an enemy of his kind, and he would make no move to end it. It was as if he was watching an oncoming train as he felt Reid’s hand on his thigh tremble and grasp fruitlessly as his feverish pace stuttered with his impending climax – and when he spilled the sound he whined into McCullum’s shoulder was broken and choked. 

Icy hot undulations shivered down the doctor’s spine, and McCullum’s hand glided up Jonathan’s side until it tangled itself in the soft head of hair that cascaded down and tickled the hunter’s cheek. It was thoughtless, an act of muscle and movement rather than thought and rationality, but as McCullum twirled the fine hair idly between his fingers the Ekon nosed deeper into the crook of his neck and drew a long, redundant inhale. That quiet breath wicked the apprehension from McCullum’s thoughts as if the vampire could steal fear from burdened lungs rather than blood from guarded veins, and in the quiet that followed, McCullum reflected. 

The weight of the doctor crushing his chest was comforting, like a weighted blanket, secure and warm encompassing him, and the bare skin that was open to the cool air not covered by the doctor’s body prickled uncomfortably. Reid’s hand felt solid where it slowly idled up and down his right leg still hooked around his waist, up and over the divot above McCullum’s hipbone and down the outside of his muscled thigh and back again, steady, constant, soothing. As thoughtless as McCullum’s own hand still drawing pointless shapes across Reid’s scalp as the doctor breathed in the musk of his skin and lapped at the sweat collecting in the dip of his collarbone. Lips flooded with repurposed warmth sucked bruises to his skin, and Geoffrey pulled lightly on a fistful of hair to guide him back. 

“How many times do I have to tell you to watch your marks,” he growled. Reid followed Geoffrey’s pull until the hunter’s hand slipped from his hair to cup the back of his neck, and the doctor gazed down at him fondly. 

“At least once more,” he licked his lips unapologetically. Reid shifted, hands to McCullum’s hips, and the movement tugged on the rim of Geoffrey’s spent hole. McCullum felt raw, his ring of muscle tired and abused, and he shuddered when the doctor pulled back enough to slip free of his body and at the warm trickle that followed his withdrawal. The back of his head met the desk again with a light thump and he lowered his feet back to the floor with the help of Reid’s steadying hand. He stepped back to give McCullum room. 

Eyes resting closed and body lax, the hunter allowed himself a moment of respite before he pushed himself up on propped elbows to meet Reid’s hazy eyes. As pale a blue as his skin was white they stared back at him, and McCullum was once again reminded of a panther in the night, sleek and hidden in the undergrowth with only twin piercing reflections to mark the darkness. The hunter had long since lost his fear of jungle beasts. 

McCullum sat up fully. The ache in his hips did not go unnoticed. Reid tracked him with those damnable eyes as if he might lose sight of him if he glanced away, and every time Reid got that look on his face it made McCullum feel more exposed than if he’d prostrated himself on a church floor in front of God himself. It was as though Jonathan was looking through him clear as glass, and he supposed that to an Ekon that may not be far from the truth. That familiar look unnerved him once, but Geoffrey had grown to think little of it now, and instead took hold of the doctor’s wrist to drag him back to stand between his knees as he tilted his chin up. He abandoned his wrist just as quickly to tug on the back of Reid’s neck and pull him down into a wet and effortless kiss that soothed the ache in his bones like a balm, and Jonathan smiled and sighed against his lips. 

Their kiss was only broken by the fatigue in the arm that held McCullum upright, and as the strain wore on his muscles the lower he sank back down to the desk. When he pulled away completely, Reid let him go. The hunter shuffled and moved to stand with deliberate slowness and ignored Reid’s hovering hand like he ignored the soreness in his thighs. 

“Are you alright?” the doctor asked and Geoffrey scoffed. 

“M’fine, Reid. Why don’t you go find me my pants,” he asked without inflection. Always so like McCullum to ask a question in the form of an answer – as if the other’s acquiescence was assured. Reid left him to retrieve the pants. 

McCullum stood and took a tentative step, a bit weak in the knee but sturdy enough, and when he shuffled his right foot to take another the left wobbled and buckled like a house of cards in a hurricane, dropping him to a knee as he threw out a hand to clutch at the stability of the desk again. Reid’s hand was at his back in an instant, the other full of McCullum’s discarded trousers, and McCullum grimaced as he accepted the doctor’s touch. 

Back on his feet the hunter bristled and stretched his legs, flexing his toes and rolling his ankles to shake the trembling out, but the weakness prevailed and the arm that snuck its way around his waist was more helpful than he would’ve liked to admit. 

“Did I overdo it?” Reid wondered. Geoffrey threw a resigned arm across the devil’s shoulders to accommodate the one supporting him at the hip. 

“Don’t get a swelled head,” he warned and let the other take his weight. 

“You’re trembling like a fawn.” 

Geoffrey scowled and bit back a slew of insults. There would be no point to them, he reminded himself. Reid was an ass, but in his heart of hearts McCullum knew the doctor didn’t have the capacity for cruelty. It was only a welfare check. “Hide your fangs, snake, I’d like to see you try it,” he settled for as he dragged Reid to the dresser like a crutch.

“You’ve never asked me to,” he pointed out as if it were so simple. McCullum quieted without rebuttal. He supposed that was true. He’d never asked Reid to subject himself to the act that McCullum had been surprised himself to crave. It was a role he’d put upon himself without question, and the doctor had taken up the opposite with gusto. The concept that he was amenable to both was not one Geoffrey had ever thought to entertain, and the uncertainty that accompanied it was unsettling. The nature of their relationship, if he deigned to give it such a name, was tumultuous enough that McCullum had to consider if he truly wanted to open that particular can of fresh worms. Rocking the boat now could prove to capsize it. The thought could sit for a later date. 

At the dresser he removed what was left of his shirt, peeling the slick cotton from uncomfortably damp skin like a dried glue, missing button long forgotten. From close behind, Reid watched him toss the rumpled shirt beside the wash basin like a silent guardian. A neutral omen. One unable to keep his hands to himself. McCullum wondered why he bothered letting go at all for how often the man’s arms ended up wound around his waist. 

Turning in the loose embrace, McCullum raked up Jonathan’s exposed chest with his eyes first before blunt nails followed. The doctor had tucked himself back into his trousers, but his button up still hung open and inviting. Geoffrey rested his palms against the doctor’s chest and closed the gap to resume their lazy kisses, pleased at the way strong arms squeezed him tighter and a more daring palm cupped the meat of his bare ass. Jonathan was getting better at gauging the timing of these things, of when McCullum would accept a more lingering touch, a softer kiss, a gentler caress, and it thrilled him more than the burning grips and harsher bites. He was also getting better at reading when he could press his luck.

Immortality would never be able to grant Reid enough time to drink his fill of McCullum’s warmth, but he stole the moments when he could. McCullum obliged him tonight and poured himself into the doctor’s embrace by locking his wrists at the base of his neck as he crushed his chest closer, drawn to the contact like a snake to heat. Reid’s skin had no right to feel so tepid. Thoughts absorbed, the doctor’s hand met no resistance as it slid over the swell of the hunter’s backside and between his thighs, slick with oil and wet with Jonathan’s own spend. McCullum pulled his tongue back from the doctor’s mouth, but not his lips from Reid’s own.

“Now what’re you doing?” he murmured with a voice like coarse gravel. Jonathan hummed against his mouth in lieu of an answer as he continued to swirl his fingers through the mess of McCullum’s inner thighs, and, seemingly satisfied, swept slicked fingers up between his cheeks and unerringly back into his slackened hole in one slow and fluid motion. The dazed grunt McCullum stumbled out lowered quickly into a dull groan against the doctor’s lips, and he sucked a harsh breath between clenched teeth as Reid pushed his own dribbling spend back inside him. It wasn’t uncomfortable, loose and wet as he was, but the sickening sound of him opening around slick fingers fought to tinge his ears scarlet. 

“You’re a sick fuck,” he hissed irritably when he caught Reid’s hooded eyes. 

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing we know an excellent doctor,” he breathed back. Geoffrey huffed and pushed at the doctor’s chest, who relented and withdrew, albeit not far. 

There was something about McCullum’s waist that the doctor couldn’t seem to leave alone. It was where his hands always seemed to settle, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to rest his grip on the prominence of bone just above that chiseled V of muscle that guided helpless eyes down to his groin. To have that point of contact often steadied them both. Jonathan was able to feel the solidness of the other man, like a testament that he existed truly in his hold, and Geoffrey didn’t mind. It was comforting in a way; to be steadied. To be contained when it felt like all the pressure and the stress and the exhaustion of the life of a general would bubble over and slip through the cracks of him, Reid’s firm hands on his hips seemed like the only thing holding him all together. And so Geoffrey didn’t mind. 

Behind McCullum the wash basin beside his discarded shirt was still filled with shallow water, and Reid took it upon himself to reach past and take the washcloth from the bowl. The water was cool, no warmer than the room, and when Reid brought the ratty rag to Geoffrey’s cheek and smoothly swiped the sweat from below his left eye it was rough against his skin. Geoffrey watched the doctor’s face as he continued to dab his forehead and cheeks with meticulous care, gentle and ridiculously considerate. Reid paid him no mind. McCullum made no sound. 

When finished, Reid dipped the cloth in the bowl again and squeezed the excess water in a single fist, the other hand still resting lightly over Geoffrey’s hip. Continuing down the side of the man’s neck, the bruises that had been sucked to the surface dotted his throat like a field of purple orchids, a painting Jonathan wouldn’t have sold for all the money in London. For them retribution would come, but for now all was quiet. He took great care to wash the hunter’s neck, and took his excessive time tracing the blurred outline of each individual ecchymosis with the soaked cloth until his skin glittered damp in the lamp light. 

Another dab in the basin and he continued down the hunter’s chest, toned and smooth, scarred and perfect, down further to feel over the hard muscle of his abdomen. The fine hair there matted to his skin when wet, darkening in color and leaving faint swirls like brushstrokes, Reid’s own personal Starry Night. It was not a painting of his own making of course, Geoffrey had painted himself in his own image long before his name had ever burned Reid’s tongue, but it was as if Reid was his conservator. Gentle, concerted in his efforts to supply the hunter with fresh paint to fill in the gaps that time had eaten out of him, helping to restore the picture to its whole. It was not Reid’s job nor his intent to paint him over, redraw him new or better or beautiful. It was not a job at all, but a will to be all the hunter needed. Whatever form was necessary to fill in the cracks of Geoffrey’s contentment, Reid would gladly take the shape. 

Or, if he himself couldn’t, he would just as soon hunt down anything that could.

Brushing clear water across more dark bruises spilling over the hunter’s hips Reid continued his work, and Geoffrey raised each arm from his sides in turn to give him the space. They would ache when pressed, he already knew, but when Reid swiped over them it was with painstaking care and Geoffrey could feel nothing but the rough scratch of well-worn fabric and cool rivulets already drying in the open air. 

“Do they hurt?” Reid wondered aloud.

“No,” McCullum responded. 

“Are you lying to me?” 

“No.”

McCullum was clean where Reid continued to trace the edges of purple arching around his waist, faint lines curling over either hip bone and deepening in color at the pointed ends where shallow cuts from sharp nails had indented his skin. Reid, transfixed, didn’t seem to notice his own intensity. 

“You like them,” McCullum pointed out, and Reid, as if startled, paused and raised his glance. McCullum’s eyes held no beratement, only simple truth, but Jonathan looked reprimanded nonetheless. 

“I don’t–” Jonathan paused, his lips flattened to a thin frown to match his pinched brow “–they’re evidence I took it too far.”

“You like them,” McCullum repeated patiently, not unaware of the thumb smoothing back and forth across the darkest of the marks. Jonathan didn’t seem to be conscious of it at all.

Geoffrey lost the man’s eyes when they fell to admire the way his thumb traced the silhouettes, and it took Reid a moment to find his thoughts again. “They look… nice.” 

McCullum smiled despite himself. The doctor wasn’t one to lose his voice easily and the lack of eloquence in his phrasing made the hunter chuckle softly, and Reid smiled in turn. 

“Just watch where you leave ‘em. I’ve already explained too many bruises to too many gossips.”

“Mhm,” Reid replied, “of course. I’ll be sure to take more care in the future,” he lied and resumed his task. 

Scrubbing lightly at the drying spend collected in the crook of his thigh, McCullum gave a slow hiss when the cold rag dragged along his softened cock. He stepped closer when ushered and replaced his palms on Reid’s chest as the doctor reached around him to wipe his backside, cleaning him of the slimy mix that was beginning to stick uncomfortably the more it dried. It burned slightly when the coarseness of the rag brushed against his entrance, but the cool relief that being clean brought with it soothed his aggravated skin. 

He let out a breath as he leaned his forehead against Reid’s shoulder and rough beard scratched his cheek when he tucked his chin and pressed his nose to the crook of the other’s neck. Jonathan was a wonder for more reasons then McCullum had fingers to count, but perhaps the subtlest was his scent. It was like nothing at all. Nearly absent entirely. Not for the first time he mused that if water had a fragrance, this would be it. Clean. Clear. Pure. The only smells that ever lingered weren’t Jonathan himself but what clung to him as tightly as Geoffrey did now; the smell of rubbing alcohol and fine pomade, new leather and clean linen. Always things Geoffrey associated with cleanliness and the refined, but tonight there was nothing. Nothing but water. 

Reid was elated at the affection, practically purring with enthusiasm, and when McCullum pressed a light kiss behind the doctor’s ear there was a moment he thought his bones might melt with how weak it left him. 

“You’re unusually endearing tonight, I thought I’d just as soon be slapped as kissed,” he mumbled into the hunter’s hair when the man turned back to curl into his chest. McCullum was clean enough, and Reid abandoned the task by wrapping his arms around him and interlocking his hands at the small of his back.

“Did you want me to stop?” McCullum asked knowingly against his collarbone. 

“No…” Reid replied predictably. 

“Then shut it.”

These moments were coming more frequently as of late, where Reid was allowed to indulge in the warm cocoon of McCullum’s embrace, and though it was a tainted hope it was hope all the same. Of what, he couldn’t be sure, but it felt like something. Like growth. And though it felt blissful in the moment, it made their partings more bitter than sweet. 

The muscle beneath McCullum’s hand flexed suddenly, and he rolled his head to the side to peer up at Reid questioningly, the doctor’s gaze far away. 

“What is it?”

“Another.”

McCullum groaned, at his wits end with his own men, and disentangled from Reid with a cold resentment toward his own responsibilities. 

“I swear it Reid, some days it’s like herding cats,” he grumbled as he shuffled back into his pants, still a bit rickety on his own feet for his liking. He shrugged into a fresh shirt and tucked it into his trousers before buckling his belt and collecting his shoes. He trudged to the bed and plopped down before thinking better of it, and had to cast a look around to track down his missing socks. Reid materialized beside him with an outstretched hand, and McCullum nodded gratefully as he took the discarded pair he offered. Shoes in place, he labored to his feet to make a quick pass in front of the mirror and felt Reid’s eyes on him with every step. 

“Are you in any pain?” the doctor asked.

“‘M fine, John, I’m fine. You’d best be on your way,” he said as he wrapped his favorite scarf round his marred throat. “Assuming the window will do ya.”

Jonathan opened his mouth again when the third knock rang from the door and both pairs of eyes snapped up instinctively. 

“McCullum I ain’t fucking dealing with Powels,” Sanders called without waiting for an answer, “if he can’t handle getting what he gets it ain’t my fuckin’ problem!”

McCullum ignored the call and stepped to Jonathan to curl an arm smoothly around his waist before he pulled him in for a kiss that was too sudden and too short for Reid to grip him back, and just as quickly the man was a foot away again. “Go,” Geoffrey ordered quietly. He thumped the vampire on the chest with the backs of his knuckles before turning to shout, “Enough! We’re gonna have a spat if you lot can’t straighten yourselves out without a parent present.” 

His stride was smooth, but Reid could tell it was a forced composure as the hunter crossed the room and ripped the door open. Sander’s beady eyes stared up at McCullum, a good few inches shorter than the other, but he stood tall in spite of the commander’s sharp glare. “Go on then, lead the way and show me just how fucking incompetent you all are,” Geoffrey groused. Sanders huffed but didn’t argue, and as McCullum closed the door behind him his dark gaze saw nothing amiss save for the fluttering of curtains and the feel of London’s chilly night air. The room beyond was empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus, we should be back on track now~


End file.
